A Deal Could Turn Haun Against Dally

The game is on.

Now that a jury has spared the life of Diana Haun, legal analysts say negotiations are likely between her lawyers and prosecutors plotting strategy against co-defendant Michael Dally, whose wife Haun was convicted of savagely murdering in 1996.

“If we’re right about the prosecution wanting her testimony, the game would have been on irrespective of the sentence,” said retired attorney George Eskin, a former prosecutor and defense lawyer. “But now it’s a different game.”

Had the 36-year-old grocery clerk been sentenced to death, she would have had little choice but to agree to testify against her former lover to try to save her life, Eskin said. Now, her attorneys may ask prosecutors to agree to a sentence that would allow her to one day walk free, said Eskin and other lawyers.

“It’s the difference between life without the possibility of parole and life with that possibility,” Eskin said.

Prosecutors cannot compel Haun to testify even though her trial is over, because she may appeal her sentence and her forced testimony would violate her 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination, lawyers said.

Superior Court Judge Frederick Jones is set to impose Haun’s life prison sentence Nov. 24, the same day Dally’s trial begins. Before then, however, prosecutors could cut a deal with the convicted murderer.

“If they worked a deal with her, the prosecution could go to the judge with a motion to strike the special-circumstance allegation” from the murder charge, said Laurie Levenson, a dean at Loyola Law School. “That would leave her facing 25 years to life.”

Haun was convicted in September of murder, kidnapping, conspiracy and the special circumstance of committing murder for monetary gain in the slaying of Ventura homemaker Sherri Dally. Under the law, she must be sentenced to death or to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

But Jones could change the charge and the sentence, lawyers said.

“The district attorney could go to court and stipulate that something less than life without the possibility of parole is acceptable,” Eskin said. “But the judge is going to say, ‘What’s the rationalization?’ And they would say, ‘We need her testimony in the Dally prosecution.’ It would certainly strengthen their case. Maybe they need it, but I don’t know.”

Yet, Oxnard lawyer David Shain, who has also closely followed the Haun trial, said prosecutors will be careful not to make too many concessions to Haun.

“She is the one who apparently carried out this rather gruesome crime,” Shain said. “And it might be politically difficult for the district attorney to work out something that is less than life without parole. I tend to doubt that he would do that.”

Lawyers on both sides of the case could not comment on what happens now, because Jones has gagged them until the Dally trial is over.

But other lawyers said that Haun’s position was enhanced Monday, and not only because her life was spared.

Just how much leverage she gained depends on how strong the prosecution’s case is against Dally, who was depicted in Haun’s trial as a dead-end, drug-using grocery clerk who preyed on weak women and bought prostitutes.

Despite his alleged character flaws, the Ventura County Grand Jury failed to indict Dally when it first heard evidence against him in August 1996. And those familiar with the case have said from the start that the evidence against Haun was stronger than that against Dally, since she is believed to have committed the actual murder by herself.

But Levenson believes that the jury’s quick, three-hour decision to spare Haun’s life may be a bad sign for Dally. It indicates jurors at least partially accepted the defense’s argument that Haun was Dally’s dupe, and acted out the scheme of the 37-year-old Ventura man through blind devotion.

“The fact that she got a more lenient sentence isn’t necessarily good news for Michael Dally,” Levenson said. “Her good news may be his bad news, because all it means is that he is the more culpable defendant, and another jury may feel the same.”

Jurors said Monday that they did indeed spare Haun’s life because they thought she acted as a pawn of the stronger Dally when murdering his wife.

“She was a gal under the influence of that turkey Michael Dally,” said tile store owner Bert Walker, 74.

Yet Shain concluded that the penalty verdict may bode well for Dally.

“It now seems less likely that Haun will testify against Dally,” he said, “and that can only be an asset to his defense.”

Haun may be motivated to testify against Dally even without a deal.

Her love affair with Dally--continued through letters even after both were jailed last year--crumbled when Haun shared a jail cell with a prostitute this year and learned that Dally had sex with several prostitutes behind her back, according to court testimony.