Haun Prosecution Ends Closing Argument

Driven by blinding passion, Diana Haun viciously stabbed the wife of her longtime lover and tossed her body in a garbage-littered ravine, a Ventura County prosecutor argued Wednesday.

It was a crime intended to remove an obstacle from Haun’s life--a crime that warrants a first-degree murder conviction, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lela Henke-Dobroth said in closing arguments before a packed courtroom.

“She murdered her in the most brutal fashion imaginable, and she threw her in the trash--in the dump,” Henke-Dobroth said, concluding an often biting and angry summation.

But in his closing remarks, Deputy Public Defender Neil Quinn told the jury in Haun’s sensational trial that prosecutors failed to prove their case against his 36-year-old client.

They have no forensic evidence, such as fingerprints or hair fibers, linking her to the kidnap-slaying of 35-year-old homemaker Sherri Dally, Quinn argued.

And although two eyewitnesses testified to seeing a blond woman handcuff Dally and place her in the back seat of a blue-green car on May 6, 1996, neither person was able to identify Haun as the kidnapper.

The prosecution wrapped up its closing argument Wednesday; Quinn is expected to continue his statement this morning. The closing arguments capped a six-week trial that has been among the most closely watched in recent Ventura County history.

Testimony about witchcraft, human sacrifice, murder and adultery has drawn dozens of spectators. Some arrived at the courthouse at 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, vying for a seat and to get a glimpse of the defendant.

Haun is charged with murder, kidnapping and conspiracy, in addition to two special circumstance allegations that make her eligible for the death penalty if convicted.

Her lover, Michael Dally, is also charged in his wife’s slaying, but he will be tried after Haun.

Standing at a podium, a few feet from the jury box, Henke-Dobroth began her closing argument by projecting an enlarged image of Sherri Dally on a courtroom screen.

“During the past many weeks, you have heard more than ample evidence in this case,” the prosecutor began, “to convince you beyond a shadow of a doubt that that person is the person who killed that lady.”

The prosecutor gestured to the giant image of a smiling Sherri Dally gazing over the courtroom from the projector screen.

As she spoke, she turned on her heel and pointed at the defendant before gesturing again to the smiling image of the victim.

Henke-Dobroth told the jury that Haun wanted Sherri Dally out of the picture so she could marry Michael Dally and raise his two children.

Her love for him was so intense, the prosecutor argued, that the defendant would not tolerate another woman in Michael Dally’s life.

She used those emotions to carry out one of the most brutal killings imaginable, Henke-Dobroth said, suggesting to rapt jurors that Haun stabbed Sherri Dally at least eight times, once in the heart, twisting the knife to intentionally inflict pain.

“This is a cold callous person so capable of what she did,” the prosecutor said, pointing at Haun across the courtroom.

Throughout Henke-Dobroth’s summation, which lasted about four hours, Haun, dressed in a pale yellow suit, sat quietly at the defense table next to her attorneys.

She rarely raised her head to look at the prosecutor, who repeatedly referred to her simply as “that woman.” Haun occasionally would write notes on yellow Post-It pads, but rarely made eye contact with even her own lawyers.

When Quinn began his summation, she perked up and lifted her chin to watch him portray her as an unwitting pawn in Michael Dally’s plot to kill his wife.

In his opening statement last month, Quinn also suggested that a third suspect, possibly a Latino male who might have used Haun’s credit card, was the true killer.

But Henke-Dobroth argued Wednesday that there is no evidence in the trial testimony to support Quinn’s suggestion of a “phantom killer.”

Instead, she said, the court record is replete with evidence that proves Haun was the person who premeditated and carried out the killing.

At least three days before Dally was abducted from the parking lot of a Ventura Target store, Haun went shopping for a variety of items that prosecutors believe were used in the kidnapping and slaying.

On May 3, 1996, a pair of handcuffs was purchased by a dark-haired woman at a Ventura uniforms store, according to store clerks. Dally was handcuffed at the time of the kidnapping, according to court testimony.

On May 4, the same woman returned to buy a security badge, a clerk testified. She was wearing a floral skirt.

On the same day, an employee at Oxnard Discount Wigs testified, Haun came into her shop at 5 p.m., wearing a floral skirt, to buy a wig. She wanted one that would make her look authoritative, clerk Sandra Acevedo testified.

Also on May 4, Haun wrote a personal check for various items at Kmart, including a tan pantsuit, camping ax, towel and trash bags--items prosecutors contend were used in the killing.

She also bought white poster board, a portion of which was found during a search of Haun’s home by police, with a rectangular section, roughly the size of a license plate, cut out.

One witness testified that she thought the suspicious blue-green car in the Target parking on May 6 had an altered license plate.

On May 5, Haun rented a blue-green Nissan Altima from a car rental agency at Oxnard Airport. She reserved the car in advance and used her credit card to secure the rental, according to court testimony.

Dally’s blood was later found in the back seat and on the floorboard of the same blue-green car, according to DNA tests. The carpets and seat had been cleaned and there were no fingerprints inside, investigators testified.

Prosecutors have argued that the three-day shopping trip is proof of premeditation and planning prior to Dally’s killing. That planning led to action on the morning of May 6, 1996, they said.

Two witnesses saw a blond person sitting in a car outside Dally’s home on Channel Drive in Ventura before 8 a.m. It was Haun, the prosecutor said, stalking, watching and waiting for Sherri to come out.

At 8:10 a.m., a security camera at Target recorded Dally walking into the store. At 9:22 a.m., witnesses saw her walk out and get into her big white van in the parking lot.

But before she could drive away, witnesses said, the woman in the blue-green car pulled up, blocked the van and approached Dally. The woman in the tan suit talked with Dally briefly, then turned her around and slapped handcuffs on her wrists before placing her in the back seat of the car.

That was the last time anyone saw Dally alive.

Her remains were found 26 days later in a steep ravine between Ventura and Ojai off Canada Larga Road. A search party of volunteers found the skeletal remains scattered in a gully along with a discarded washing machine, trash and other junk.

Henke-Dobroth suggested to the jury that after leaving Target, Haun drove Dally 15 minutes to the site where the body was found.

At 10:18 a.m., Haun placed a phone call to Michael Dally from a pay phone near Ventura Harbor, according to her calling card records. Subtracting another 15 minutes for driving time, Henke-Dobroth said a 15-minute window of time remains in which Haun could have carried out the killing.

After the murder was completed, she told the jury, Haun attempted to clean up and conceal the crime, writing a check at a hardware store, possibly for cleaning supplies, and calling a dry cleaner in Camarillo to ask: “How to get a lot of blood out of the back seat of a car,” the prosecutor said.

Meanwhile, Michael Dally failed to notify the police of his wife’s disappearance until 3:30 p.m. on May 6. And he told a parent who came to pick up a child from Sherri’s in-home day care business that afternoon that his wife had been “nabbed.”

At 1:30 a.m. the next morning, a Ventura woman said, she saw Diana Haun sitting beneath the highway overpass on Canada Larga Road just a mile from where Sherri Dally’s body was found.

Samantha Spencer’s testimony--disputed by two defense witnesses--was honest and should be trusted, the prosecutor told the jury.

Continuing to pull together a dense listing of circumstantial evidence, Henke-Dobroth said that a day after Dally was reported missing, her “so distraught” husband went to the movies with his girlfriend.

And on May 8, police found the twosome scantily clad when they knocked on the door to request an interview with Haun. Dally, shirtless and wearing only shorts, came from the direction of Haun’s bedroom, police said.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what they are doing two days after she has kidnapped and murdered Michael Dally’s wife,” the prosecutor argued, again pointing at the defendant across the courtroom.

But Quinn said there is no abundance of evidence to convict Haun of the charges beyond a reasonable doubt--the legal standard for a murder conviction. There is only an abundance of suspicion and the prosecutor’s desire to “will” the jury into believing its unsupported theory of the case.

“The state presented no evidence identifying Ms. Haun as the abductor,” Quinn argued, biting back at Henke-Dobroth’s often scathing attack on his client.

In fact, he argued, it doesn’t make sense to think that Haun would knowingly leave a trail of phone records, credit card receipts and personal checks if she were planning a killing.

Her lack of guile supports the defense claim, he argued, that she was not a party to Michael Dally’s murder scheme, but basically an errand girl.

“The very nature of the plan indicates that there was one person making the plan and not letting the other person in,” Quinn argued. “How on earth could she have knowingly agreed to this plan?”

“Here is a woman who leaves a swath as wide as Sherman’s march to Georgia in preparing for this, right,” he continued. “But what happens then? She suddenly gets smart? Is it dumb luck that the trail stops?”

Quinn also said that Michael Dally was a drug user and a patron of prostitutes--a person who carried on a separate life on the streets under a pseudonym.

And through his contacts with drug dealers and criminals, there would have been any number of people who could have carried out the slaying of Sherri Dally, he said.

In concluding her argument, Henke-Dobroth referred to Michael Dally as an “immoral jerk” who found a willing accomplice in his desire to get rid of his wife.

She alluded to Haun as a home wrecker who sent a phony divorce certificate to her boyfriend as a joke.

And touching on the issues of witchcraft and human sacrifice, the prosecutor defended the testimony of a grocery store co-worker who said Haun told her she wanted to perform a sacrifice as a gift to a friend.

“A phony divorce for Christmas and a murder for your birthday.”