A socialite convicted of shooting her husband got a chance at a new trial after a judge found that blood-spatter evidence may support her original claim that it was a suicide.
The judge recommended Thursday that Susie Mowbray's 1988 murder conviction be overturned and that she get a new trial. District Judge Darrell Hester's ruling will go to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for a final decision."We've been waiting for this for a long time," said Mowbray's son, Wade Burnett. "Whether she's out for Christmas or not, she's getting out."
Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz said after the ruling that he planned to ask the Appeals Court for a hearing to dispute the judge's findings.
Prosecutors contended the former cheerleader and homecoming queen shot her husband, Brownsville car dealer Bill Mowbray, in the head in 1987 because she wanted his insurance money. Susie Mowbray contended he killed himself because of financial troubles.
At a hearing in Hester's court in August, the state's forensics expert admitted that his trial testimony about finding blood on Susie Mowbray's nightgown was scientifically invalid because a follow-up test was not done.
When asked whether his trial testimony would be scientifically invalid without the second test, Austin police Sgt. Dusty Hesskew responded, "Yes, sir."
In his ruling, Hester said that without Hesskew's testimony, "there was another equally reasonable hypothesis other than the applicant's guilt: Mowbray's death was suicide or an accident."
Also testifying at the August hearing was Herbert MacDonell, a New York expert whom prosecutors initially asked to examine evidence in the case.
MacDonell, an internationally recognized authority on blood spatters and an expert witness at the O.J. Simpson trial, said that in 1987 he examined the evidence and found no blood on Mowbray's nightgown.
In a report to prosecutors, he wrote: "Because of the absence of blood on the garments and the trajectory . . . it is more probable that it is a suicide than a homicide."
Mowbray's original defense attorney testified at the hearing that he knew of MacDonell's report but didn't call him as a witness because prosecutors led him to believe they planned to use him.