Prosecutors Urge Judge to Let Jurors See Dally Video

A 10-minute videotape presented in court Wednesday featured a collection of happy scenes from Sherri Dally’s life that was intended to demonstrate what her family had lost:

Dally proudly pulling her children around the yard in a red wagon. Dally cheerfully blowing out the candles on her 29th birthday cake. Dally affectionately nuzzling her giggling toddler son, Max. And Dally giddily racing around the driveway after her father as they drenched each other with giant, green squirt guns.

Prosecutors want jurors to see the video next week when they start deciding whether Diana Haun should be sentenced to death or life in prison for the murder of Dally.

Sherri Dally’s slaying shook her family and friends horribly, leaving a gap in their lives that will never be filled, and there is ample evidence to show this, prosecutors argued Wednesday.

The question is how much of that evidence jurors should be allowed to hear next week during the penalty phase.

“The life that was taken by Diana Haun encompasses more than May 6, ‘96, and what Sherri Dally looked like the day she died,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Lela Henke-Dobroth told Superior Court Judge Frederick A. Jones.

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Dobroth argued that jurors should hear testimony by friends about how alarmed they were to hear of Dally’s disappearance that day, and how shocked they were upon finding her skeletal remains strewn about a Canada Larga hillside a month later.

Then Dobroth showed Jones the collection of Dally’s home videos.

Haun quietly watched the glowing television screen, her hands in her lap, her foot jiggling slightly.

Then Dobroth handed Jones a stack of 19 photographs of Dally alone and with her children and family, arguing jurors should be able to learn that Dally’s was a unique life, cut short by a murderer who deserves the death penalty.

“The defendant wanted to replace Sherry as the mother of the children, and she killed her to accomplish that, and in doing so, took her away from those children,” Dobroth argued.

But Deputy Public Defender Neil Quinn argued the law governing the penalty phase of a capital murder trial tightly restricts how much so-called victim-impact evidence a jury can hear.

The law, Quinn said, “is limited to the evidence that logically shows harm caused by the defendant. These [video] scenes, as much as they demonstrate the events in a person’s life and the activities the victim engaged in, are not evidence.”

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During the trial, the jury already heard a great deal of information about Dally before it convicted Haun, and case law says such information should not be repeated unless it directly addresses the harm caused by the defendant, Quinn argued.

“I don’t think [case law] ever envisioned that the penalty phase would be a life history, a memorial service for the victim,” he said. “This is not the focus of this proceeding. [The focus] is constitutionally mandated to be on the defendant and the crime.”

Quinn also argued that little legal precedent exists to allow jurors to hear victim-impact testimony from Dally’s friends because they are not directly related to her.

He argued against letting jurors hear testimony from Kristin Olson and Debbie English, two friends of Dally who helped search for her body.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Frawley argued a murder sometimes hits a victim’s friends even harder than it affects family members.

“So many people are closer to their friends than to their family,” he told Jones. “Sherri didn’t see her mother all that often, but her friends saw her all the time. Debbie English, a couple of times a day.”

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But Quinn argued the word “survivors” used in the law is most commonly defined to mean family members, not friends.

The attorneys also differed over whether jurors should be allowed to read “The Story of My Life,” an essay Dally wrote in the fifth grade. Prosecutors want it in, the defense wants it out.

And Quinn asked Jones to limit the testimony jurors can hear from John Goulet, the psychotherapist who will testify on how Dally’s slaying affected her two young sons so that the boys themselves will not have to testify.

The jurors should be allowed to hear how the boys were directly affected by their mother’s killing, but not to hear Goulet’s expert opinion on how it will affect their lives in the future, Quinn said.

Arguments are expected to continue today, but Jones gave no indication as to when he will rule on what evidence the jurors can receive when the penalty phase begins Monday.