Jury’s Finding in Ventura County Murder Trial Stands Out

They killed over custody battles or to cover up crimes. They killed for money, hiring thugs to murder rich husbands or shooting strangers for their ATM cards.

But of the eight women on California’s death row, none did what a jury has now decided in the case of grocery clerk Diana Haun--murdered primarily for love.

In three weeks, the jury in Haun’s murder trial is scheduled to return to Ventura County Superior Court to decide whether the 36-year-old Port Hueneme woman should be executed for fatally stabbing her lover’s wife--a crime prosecutors say was committed as a birthday gift to her boyfriend, Michael Dally.

If the jury decides she should die and the sentence is imposed by Superior Court Judge Frederick A. Jones, Haun would join a small sorority of killers now awaiting execution in a women’s prison near Chowchilla.

By comparison, more than 470 men are awaiting execution at San Quentin Prison in San Rafael--a number that increases at a rate of about three per month.

Haun would be the 10th murderer sent to death row from this county, and the first woman in nearly 50 years.

But Haun is an unusual candidate for execution--a college-educated woman with no criminal record whose meek courtroom appearance seems to belie the heinous crime she was convicted Friday of committing.

Those factors will undoubtedly come into play when Haun’s penalty phase begins Oct. 20, attorneys say, along with evidence on her childhood, character and mental capacity.

“It is one thing to return a death verdict against a Night Stalker,” said George Eskin, a retired defense attorney and former prosecutor. “It is another thing to return a death verdict against a mild-looking woman who has fallen under the influence of a man who was portrayed as such a bad guy.”

During her six-week trial, defense attorneys argued Haun was duped unknowingly into a murder scheme concocted by Michael Dally. Dally, witnesses testified, often talked about wanting his wife dead, took drugs and patronized prostitutes, even while he was seeing Haun and married to Sherri Dally.

Haun’s blind devotion to the 37-year-old Ventura man--which was not contested at trial--will very likely be a returning theme in the penalty phase, Eskin said.

“The defense will probably raise the specter again of her manipulation,” he said.

The jury, made up of five women and seven men, convicted Haun of first-degree murder, kidnapping and conspiracy after 4 1/2 days of deliberations.

They found Haun had abducted Sherri Dally on May 6, 1996, as the 35-year-old homemaker was leaving a Target store and stabbed her to death before dumping her body in a steep ravine between Ventura and Ojai.

The jury also found that Haun murdered Sherri Dally, in part, for financial gain--a special circumstance that allows the death penalty to be considered as punishment in her case.

Financial gain has been a common motive in other capital murder cases. Three of the women on death row killed out of greed, seeking to cash out life insurance or mortgage policies, prison records show.

Since capital punishment was reinstated in 1977, eight women have had death sentences imposed by state judges, They are:

* Maureen McDermott, a 50-year-old former Los Angeles nurse, who in 1990 became the first woman sent to death row in 15 years. According to a probation report, she paid a hospital orderly to kill her roommate to collect a $100,000 mortgage insurance policy.

* Cynthia Coffman was twice sentenced to die, first for the 1986 San Bernardino County kidnapping, robbery, sodomy and murder of a 20-year-old woman and later for the abduction-slaying of a 19-year-old Huntington Beach woman.

Coffman was a Missouri Catholic who rode a motorcycle with her Kentucky outlaw boyfriend, James Marlow, in a 1986 cross-country crime spree. They were married atop a Harley Davidson and headed west, where they killed the two women.

At the time of Coffman’s sentencing, Judge Don A. Turner remarked that “it’s still very difficult for judges and juries to vote death for an attractive young woman. But this jury got to know her too well.”

Defense attorneys argued Coffman was a victim of a classic battered-woman situation, a woman afraid to leave an abusive lover.

* Maria del Rosia Alfaro, who killed a 9-year-old Anaheim girl, stabbing her 57 times in the bathroom of the child’s home in 1990 during a residential robbery. She was sentenced to death in 1992. At her penalty phase, Alfaro’s attorneys argued she was a victim of drug use and a “woman-child” whose lifestyle led to tragedy.

* Catherine Thompson, who was the mastermind behind her husband’s murder in Los Angeles. She was sentenced to death in 1993 after a jury found she had conspired to kill Melvin Thompson to collect on his life insurance policy. Three other co-defendants in Thompson’s murder plan were convicted and given lengthy prison sentences for their involvement.

* Mary Samuels, sent to death row in 1994 by a Van Nuys judge for orchestrating the murders of her estranged husband and the hit man she had hired to kill him. Film camera assistant Robert Samuels was shot in the head in 1988. Seven months later the hit man was dead--strangled and beaten and dumped along a highway in Ventura County.

Samuels arranged to have her husband murdered when she learned he planned to divorce her, prosecutors said. She was dubbed the “Green Widow” by police because she spent her husband’s $500,000 estate in less than a year, buying a new Porsche and throwing a huge party for herself.

Prosecutors said Samuels killed the hit man because she feared he would implicate her. The defense argued Samuels was a victim of domestic abuse.

* Celeste Carrington, who was sentenced in 1994 in San Mateo County for fatally shooting two people during separate 1992 robberies, in which she took one of the victims’ ATM card and asked him for the PIN number before killing him, according to court records.

* Kerry Dalton, sentenced to death in 1995 in San Diego County for participating in a heinous torture-killing of a woman who was beaten, electrocuted and injected with battery acid before being fatally stabbed with a screwdriver.

Dalton, who had a lengthy criminal record, was among three co-defendants who bragged about the 1988 crime and were eventually caught. Police say Dalton had accused the victim of stealing her possessions before the attack.

* Caroline Young, who was sentenced to death in Alameda County in 1995 for cutting the throats of her two grandchildren, ages 6 and 4, to keep their father from winning a custody dispute.

Elizabeth Ann Duncan was the last woman legally executed by the state. The 58-year-old matron died at San Quentin on Aug. 8, 1962, three years after being convicted of murder in Ventura County’s most famous trial. The jury took four hours and 51 minutes to convict her of murder for orchestrating the killing of her pregnant daughter-in-law.

If the jury decides to recommend a death sentence for Haun, she would be the first woman from this county to face execution since Duncan.

The possibility of the death penalty for Haun becomes moot, of course, if she were to accept an offer of life imprisonment in exchange for her testimony against Dally in the killing of his wife.

“The defendant is sitting there knowing that, because of the special-circumstance finding, that she faces the potential of the gas chamber, so she is going to have to weigh what that risk is,” Eskin said.

“The other side of the coin is, what does the prosecution want--how important is her testimony to the case against Mr. Dally?”

But prosecutors are not likely to hold out a carrot to Haun without first knowing what she would say, Eskin said. “It is a very complicated situation.”

Dally is scheduled to be tried on the same charges of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy after the penalty phase of Haun’s trial concludes. Dally also faces a possible death sentence if convicted.

Prosecutors argue he and Haun conspired to kill Sherri Dally to remove his wife from their lives and to collect on her $50,000 life insurance policy. Also, they say, Michael Dally wanted to avoid a financially ruinous divorce.

A deal with the district attorney’s office to testify against her lover is not the only option available to Haun, Eskin said. She can appeal the jury’s finding, file a motion for a new trial and urge the judge to overturn the verdicts on the grounds that insufficient evidence was presented.

“The verdicts give the prosecution leverage, but there are lots of options open for the defendant to consider,” he said.

As for Michael Dally, the Haun verdicts will not be admissible in his trial, Eskin said, but they will certainly warn his defense team that the prosecution has won its first fight.

“It tells them it’s not looking good,” he said.