Jury Finds Wife-Killer Acted in Heat of Passion : Trial: Moosa Hanoukai faces maximum 12-year sentence for bludgeoning spouse to death. Defense calls decision ‘major victory.’

A man who claimed he had been psychologically emasculated by an abusive wife for 25 years escaped a murder charge Friday when a jury found that he acted in the heat of passion when he bludgeoned her to death.

With the Van Nuys Superior Court verdict, Moosa Hanoukai, 55, faces a maximum sentence of 12 years, compared to life in prison for murder, as prosecutors had sought.

“We consider it a major victory,” lead defense attorney James E. Blatt said.

Testifying in his own behalf, Hanoukai told a jury of six men and six women that he attacked his 45-year-old wife March 29, 1993, with a wrench after she wished death upon him and the couple’s only child. Hanoukai said he hit his wife, Manijeh, dozens of times, stopping only when he grew tired.

Her body was found in the garage of the family home five days after the slaying. Hanoukai surrendered the next day after he had contacted an attorney.

His lawyers will urge Judge Kathryne Ann Stoltz place Hanoukai on probation at the April 29 sentencing for voluntary manslaughter.

“He’s not a threat to society,” said defense attorney Alaleh Kamran.

Blatt presented an unusual “cultural defense,” in which he attempted to show Hanoukai was prevented by his Persian Jewish background from obtaining a divorce. Hanoukai killed his wife on a day that was both the Jewish Sabbath and the Persian New Year’s Eve, during which the family is traditionally celebrated.

Two experts testified Hanoukai was in a “dissociative” state during the slaying and had no idea what he was doing. The defense argued that the mental breakdown was triggered by a fight, one of many throughout the couple’s stormy relationship.

But, according to Blatt, the most significant aspect of the defense was “role-reversal”--attempting to show that a man who was “brutally and sadistically abused” can suffer just as much as a woman in the same situation. The jury in the case heard testimony that Hanoukai was forced to sleep on the floor and that his wife routinely referred to him as “stupid” and an “idiot.”

“I can’t recall another case where the psychological abuse of a man was used as a mitigating factor to manslaughter,” Blatt said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Kathleen M. Cady focused on the brutality of the killing and the fact that Hanoukai cleaned up the death scene. Admitting that the truth of the killing may never be known, Cady said, Hanoukai may have been assisted by other family members, a possibility suggested by the fact that Hanoukai remembered to put pantyhose on his dead wife’s body.

“She (Cady) didn’t have much to go on to start with,” said juror Richard Mann, who also criticized the prosecutor’s preparation of the case.

“They clearly dropped the ball because they had this confession and they didn’t do their job,” one female juror said, referring to the prosecutor and Los Angeles police investigators.

Because Hanoukai called an acquaintance and admitted killing his wife, jurors felt detectives were overconfident and failed to collect fingerprints and potential murder weapons.

Jurors reported the panel was deadlocked 6-6 after two days of deliberation, but repeated viewing of the complicated jury instructions allowed them to break the impasse.

Blatt predicted that the case will lead others to try the unusual defense--one he compared to the trials of Erik and Lyle Menendez.

“I think what we’ve done in this case is a step further than Menendez,” Blatt said. “I think what this indicates now is this type of defense, if prepared adequately and thoroughly, will be taken seriously by jurors.”

A mistrial was declared in January in the trials of the Beverly Hills brothers who admitted they shotgunned their parents to death. Two juries split between murder and manslaughter after hearing the brothers detailed years of emotional and psychological abuse from their parents.

Blatt said “times are changing” and suggested jurors are now more willing to listen to claims of abuse as part of the defense in cases of violent crime.