A Dallas, Texas, man was in divorce court recently because his wife is seeking to end their marriage. The woman’s reason for seeking the divorce? She believes her husband hired a hit man to kill her. The woman was shot in the face in August and was briefly in a coma; she lost her left eye but survived the attack. Her husband is free on $1 million bail on a criminal charge of solicitation to commit murder.
According to the police, the 52-year old husband acknowledged his involvement in an affair with a woman for at least three years. Police say he hired someone to kill his wife so that he could be with his mistress in California — a charge the man and his attorney deny. In fact, the man says he hopes he can reconcile with his wife, and his attorney says he has a written statement from the wife that she does not actually want a divorce.
Solicitation is an unusual criminal charge in that a conviction does not require proof of commission of the crime claimed to have been solicited. Prosecutors do not have to prove a homicide to convict someone of the crime of solicitation to commit murder.
While many people might presume the man in this story to be guilty before the facts are heard, this is not necessarily so. It will be up to the man’s defense attorney to convince a jury that the man was not guilty of the offense he is charged with, and that the injuries his wife suffered were not as a result of actions he had taken.
Source: New York Daily News, “Woman wants divorce from husband accused of hiring hitmen to kill her,” Anthony Bartkewicz, Sept. 20, 2012