A Furious Dally Lashes Out at Prosecutors

Convicted killer Michael Dally erupted in a rage on the witness stand Tuesday, lashing out at prosecutors for pulling his two sons into the investigation of his wife’s murder.

“I hate these people for what they have done to my children,” Dally said, his voice rising in anger and his fists clenched as he told the jury about a two-hour interview prosecutors had with his sons, Devon and Max.

The 37-year-old defendant’s outburst capped two days of testimony during the penalty phase of his murder trial and was immediately followed by a series of passionate closing arguments in the high-profile case.

With his own life on the line, Dally took the witness stand briefly Monday to tell jurors that he loved his wife, Sherri, and had played no role in her slaying.

But prosecutors kept him on the stand for two days, trapping him in lies, denials and inconsistent statements during a bruising cross-examination. They were also able to show two knives previously ruled inadmissible--all of which legal analysts said could leave a searing impression upon the jury.

“He might have gotten to say his piece, but it cost him,” said Laurie Levenson, associate dean at Loyola Law School. “How much it cost we’ll have to wait and see.”

The jury is expected to begin deliberations in the case today after a final closing argument by the defense.

It was on the subject of his two children that Dally exploded--in response to a question posed by his attorney James M. Farley, who asked Dally to explain why he does not trust law enforcement.

After burying his face in his hands and snarling with anger, Dally told the jury that a prosecutor and a district attorney investigator harassed his boys, then ages 6 and 8, during a videotaped interview on June 10, 1996--nine days after their mother’s stabbed and beaten body was found by a search party.

“These boys were forced to tell these people that their mother was dead just a few days before she was buried,” Dally said, raising his voice dramatically. He later acknowledged it was a court-ordered interview as part of the investigation into his wife’s killing.

Moments after the outburst, Dally stepped down from the witness stand and Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael K. Frawley started the first of three closing arguments given by the two sides.

“Well, that was quite a performance by the master manipulator wasn’t it?” Frawley said, drawing an immediate objection from Dally’s attorneys that was overruled.

“He could be in movies,” Frawley went on, telling jurors that Dally cried on cue when discussing his slain wife. “That’s an Academy Award-winning performance. . . . It’s all theater.”

Frawley seized upon Dally’s decision to testify, telling jurors the defendant showed his true colors as a self-centered, remorseless killer who shed tears only when his own life was at stake.

The prosecutor went on to outline 11 factors for the jury’s consideration in weighing a death sentence, and told the jury the aggravating aspects of the case overwhelmingly outweigh any mitigating factors in Dally’s favor.

“You should find that the appropriate sentence is a death sentence,” Frawley said.

But in his closing argument, defense attorney Robert Schwartz told the jury that his client does not deserve the death penalty. He asked the panel to return a lesser punishment of life in prison without parole.

“Michael Dally is not a serial killer,” Schwartz said. “Michael Dally has committed a terrible crime, but he doesn’t need to be executed.”

Dally was found guilty April 6 of first-degree murder, kidnapping and conspiracy for planning with his former mistress, Diana Haun, the May 6, 1996 slaying of his wife.

Haun was found guilty of the same charges last fall and sentenced to life in prison without parole for fatally stabbing Sherri Dally, a 35-year-old day-care provider, and dumping her body in a steep ravine north of Ventura.

Although he did not wield the murder weapon, Michael Dally was the driving force behind the killing, the jury concluded. He was also convicted of two special circumstances making him eligible for the death penalty.

In his argument, Schwartz said Dally had no prior criminal record and was not the actual killer who plunged the knife into Sherri Dally’s chest. “Diana Haun--and Diana Haun alone--carried out the murder,” he argued.

Furthermore, Schwartz told the jury, to send Michael Dally to death row would “orphan” his two children who want to continue a relationship with their father.

The children were referred to numerous times throughout Dally’s testimony and the closing arguments that followed, thrust back and forth much like pawns in a high-stakes chess match.

Prosecutors argued the boys would be better off without their father and would one day resent him for killing their mother. But the defense maintained that Dally’s children should be spared the pain of losing both parents.

“Hasn’t there been enough death?” Schwartz asked.

But in her rebuttal argument, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lela Henke-Dobroth told the jury that Dally should have considered the consequences of his actions before he set into motion a savage plan to kill his children’s mother.

Henke-Dobroth described the killing as so unusual in its callousness, its intimacy between the victim and the killer, and its in-your-face betrayal, that the death penalty is the only appropriate punishment.

And she also cited Dally’s own testimony as evidence of his remorseless attitude toward the slaying of a woman he professed to love since high school.

“If Michael Dally had gotten on the stand and said, ‘God forgive me for what I have done,’ you might be hearing a different argument,” she said. “But he didn’t.”

Rather, she said, the defendant sat before jurors without a hint of sorrow in his voice and begged them to spare his life--a life the prosecutor argued does not deserve to be saved.

“If there ever was a case deserving of the ultimate punishment,” she said in her final remarks, “God knows this should be it.”

Times staff writer Fred Alvarez contributed to this story.