commentary by Patrick H. Moore
Yesterday a life was spared in Maricopa County. After three days of deliberation (imagine all the back-and-forth that must have volleyed around the jury room during those tension-packed hours), a jury of Marissa DeVault’s peers decided that life in prison in lieu of the death penalty would be sufficient punishment despite the fact that she was convicted of beating her husband, Dale Harrell, to death with a hammer in 2009.
DeVault was convicted of the first-degree-murder on April 8. The prosecutors’ theory of the case was that DeVault killed Harrell in a failed bid to collect on a life insurance policy to repay about $300,000 in loans from her boyfriend. DeVault maintains that she killed her husband in self-defense and told investigators he had physically and sexually abused her in the past.
The attack in the couple’s Gilbert, AZ home was no joke and Harrell, 34, suffered multiple skull fractures. He died nearly a month later at a hospice of complications from his head injuries.
The case had many salacious elements, including testimony about plots to hire a hit man and the fact that DeVault was a former stripper who met her boyfriend on a sugar-daddy dating website. Although these spicy details apparently caught the nose-to-the-ground antenna of HLN who no doubt salivated thinking Jodi Arias revisited, Judge Roland Steinle kept the lid on brilliantly throughout the trial. Her extensive efforts to keep the trial from becoming spectacle a la Arias was especially appropriate considering that the Arias circus enveloped this same courthouse a year ago.
DeVault’s reportedly seedy past was barely mentioned during the trial.
DeVault initially told investigators that Harrell had attacked her as she slept and choked her until she was unconscious. This part is at least theoretically credible (it could happen) but then the defendant got a little carried away. She told police that when she regained consciousness, there was another man who lived at their home beating Harrell with a hammer.
DeVault must have sensed that the strange man with a hammer defense wouldn’t fly; in any event, she later confessed to attacking her husband, saying she pummeled him in a rage while he was sleeping after he sexually assaulted her.
The prosecution trotted out DeVault’s former boyfriend, Allen Flores, a businessman, who you will see is rather a nasty fellow. Flores who met DeVault on a sugar-daddy dating website and – for reasons I cannot fathom — loaned her $300,000 during their two-year relationship.
On the stand, Flores testified that DeVault wanted to either hire someone to kill Harrell, or kill him herself, after which she would tell police he tried to rape her after a night of drinking.
Flores’ testimony appears to have been damning, but then when it was DeVault’s attorneys turn, they attacked Flores’ credibility. Why? Well, folks often do not testify as key witnesses without their backs being scratched just enough to make it worth their while, and it turned out that Flores was given immunity regarading child-pornography allegations in exchange for his testimony. The child pornography was found on Flores’ computer during a search that was part of the murder investigation, authorities said.
But although this could have affected how DeVault was perceived by the jurors, it is really a separate issue apart from DeVault’s guilt or innocence.
During the sentencing phase of her trial, Devault spoke directly to jurors. She sobbed and wiped away tears as she said she was sorry for the pain she has caused Harrell’s family and she kept talking for 11 minutes.
She also said her actions are in some way a stain upon her three daughters. “I am supposed to protect you, and instead I hurt you,”
But as important as DeVault’s direct appeal to the jurors was, Michael Kiefer of The Republic believes that it’s her children who saved her life. Kiefer writes:
DeVault had certainly plotted the murder of her husband, Dale Harrell. She had taken out insurance policies on him, talked to her lover about having him killed, asked an ex-lover to “take care of him,” had told people he was already dead.
And ultimately, she confessed to caving in his head with a claw hammer in January 2009 in the bedroom of their Gilbert home.
DeVault’s trial began in early February at the Maricopa County Courthouse. DeVault’s claim that Harrell was abusive and that she killed him in self-defense was put to the test. Prosecutors paraded friends and neighbors to the witness stand and they all insisted they had never seen Harrell raise a hand against her.
But then things turned around when DeVault’s oldest daughter, Rhiannon-Skye DeVault Harrell, 18, was sworn in to testify in late March.
“It happened fairly frequently,” Rhiannon-Skye told the jury. She detailed the beatings and testified both at the trial and during the sentencing phase of the trial. Her two younger sisters also testified.
Nonetheless, on April 8, DeVault, 36, was found guilty of first-degree-murder.
A week later, the jury determined that the murder was especially cruel, qualifying DeVault for the death penalty.
The jury began deliberating for about three days of actual discussion beginning on Tuesday, April 22 before finally reaching a decision on Wednesday
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DeVault hugged her attorneys before leaving the courtroom smiling.
“We’re happy with the decision they made, thank God,” said DeVault’s defense attorney with the symbolic name, Andrew Anderson Clemency, outside the courthouse. “They made a decision to spare a life.”
On June 6, a judge will formally impose the sentence and decide whether DeVault can be eligible for early release after 25 years.
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Yesterday was a day of mercy in Maricopa County. We, the people, need more of them.