Dally Son, 9, May Testify Next Week

Michael Dally’s 9-year-old son may be called to testify next week about the disappearance of his slain mother when defense lawyers launch their case.

Attorney James M. Farley said he is still weighing whether to put fourth-grader Devon Dally on the witness stand, or whether to play for the jury a videotape of the boy’s interview with authorities.

“I’m still not satisfied that this young man--this boy--can be put on the stand without being traumatized,” Farley said during a brief discussion in court Thursday.

“And I’m not going to put him on if he is going to be traumatized,” Farley added.

The issue arose when prosecutors complained that Dally’s lawyers had failed to turn over a witness list indicating who they plan to call next week when the defense opens its case.

Dally, a 37-year-old former grocery store employee, is accused of killing his wife, Sherri, with longtime lover Diana Haun. She was convicted of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy last fall and sentenced to life in prison.

He faces the same charges on the theory he helped Haun carry out the May 6, 1996, kidnapping and killing. Dally could face the death penalty if convicted.

Prosecutors had hoped to rest their case Thursday, but were delayed. The jury left at noon and is not scheduled to return until Monday.

After the panel was sent home, Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Frawley told the judge that prosecutors needed the witness list immediately to determine whether there would be testimony the state would oppose.

Frawley said the prosecution was particularly concerned about two potential witnesses: Devon Dally and Deputy Public Defender Neil Quinn, who represented Haun during her trial last year.

Dally’s lawyer said a witness list would be given to the prosecution by Thursday afternoon, and Superior Court Judge Charles W. Campbell Jr. said he would not address any issues dealing with proposed witnesses until Monday.

Prosecutors have already filed two motions seeking to exclude evidence that may be offered by the defense.

One motion seeks to prohibit Dally’s lawyers from asking police officers their opinions on his involvement in his wife’s kidnapping and slaying.

During the police investigation, authorities said they believed Dally was not involved, the motion states. Prosecutors argue those statements should not be allowed because “opinion testimony is generally inadmissible at trial.”

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The other motion seeks to exclude evidence about a severe head injury Haun suffered in high school. Prosecutors say Haun’s accident, in which a basketball backboard collapsed on her head, has no relevance to the case.

Defense attorneys have attempted to elicit testimony from Haun’s relatives on whether she was taking mood-altering medication associated with the accident at the time of the slaying.

In their motion, prosecutors say they expect the defense will try to introduce evidence that Haun was impulsive, hot-tempered and had trouble controlling her “mood swings” without prescribed drugs.

“The fact that Haun suffered an injury to her head approximately 19 years before the murder, and was receiving medication, has no relevance to the issues in the case,” the prosecution argues in its motion.

They also want to keep out a photograph taken of Haun at the time of the accident that shows scars across her shaved head. The picture would be prejudicial, the motion states.

“The photograph would serve only to shock the jury and to create the impression that Haun resembles a Frankenstein’s monster and would act in a less than human manner,” prosecutors write. “This is purely an emotional reaction and has no medical or logical basis.”

Meanwhile, in court testimony Thursday, former Police Det. James Burt told jurors about a series of interviews he had with Dally in the weeks after Sherri Dally’s disappearance.

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Excerpts of those tape-recorded interviews were also played for the jury. In one, Burt and his partner, Det. Skip Young, are heard telling Dally that they learned that Haun had rented a car the day before the kidnapping.

“We have the car now,” one of the detectives said on the tape, adding that the car has identical license plates to those seen by witnesses at the Target parking lot where Sherri Dally was abducted.

Prosecutors stopped the tape briefly and Burt told jurors that at that point he showed Dally a copy of the rental agreement Haun signed for the car.

“Diana was driving it?” Dally asks during the May 18 interview.

“Let me tell you something else, there was blood all over that car,” one of the detectives says.

Dally responds: “In the back seat?”

Turning off the tape, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lela Henke-Dobroth asked Burt whether police had ever mentioned to Dally that the blood was in the back seat of the car. Burt, who now works as a district attorney investigator, said police had not shared that information with the defendant at that time.

But on cross-examination, Farley suggested that witnesses had already come forward and made public statements on seeing Sherri Dally get into the back seat of a teal-colored car.

“At the date of this interview,” he said, “it was common knowledge that Sherri Dally was put in the back seat of the car, was it not?”

“I don’t know what he knew,” Burt answered.