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Provo • A Utah jury on Thursday afternoon began deliberating in the trial of Conrad Truman, an Orem man accused of killing his wife in 2012, but were sent home after a couple of hours and will return again Friday.
This is the second time a jury will weigh Truman's case.
The now-35-year-old man was convicted in 2014 by a different jury of murder and obstructing justice in the 2012 death of 25-year-old Heidy Truman. But a judge last year overturned the conviction, finding that the first jury relied on incorrect measurements of the Truman home when rendering their verdict.
On Thursday, after three weeks of trial, attorneys gave their closing arguments, each summing up their cases in a handful of words.
For the prosecution, Deputy Utah County Attorney Tim Taylor said: "Alcohol. Guns. Domestic violence."
Defense attorney Mark Moffit's summary: "Reasonable. Doubt."
During his argument, Taylor tried to use Conrad Truman's own words against him, pointing to various police interviews in which the husband gave contradicting stories about what happened on Sept. 30, 2012.
He played one audio recording in which Conrad Truman told police he didn't see a gun after Heidy Truman was shot, and then a recording of the 911 call the husband made after his wife was shot. Though the recording was not clear, Taylor asserted Conrad Truman tells the dispatcher, "There is a gun right here."
"If you believe that the defendant said, 'There is a gun right here,' you should question everything [he] tells police," Taylor told jurors.
While Taylor argued that jurors can't trust Conrad Truman's statements, Moffat argued that the Orem police officers that investigated the crime can't be trusted either.
"This investigation is a horrible, results-oriented investigation," he argued. "It's a rush to judgment … In a rush to judgment, people that are innocent end up convicted. I'm going to ask that you not let that happen here."
Moffat said the police made a number of errors investigating the case, including measuring the home wrong and presenting those measurements to a Utah medical examiner in an effort to get him to change the manner of death from "undetermined" to "homicide." The police also presented Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Edward Leis with a false motive — that the Trumans were struggling financially and the husband stood to inherit a large insurance sum — though the young couple had plenty of money, Moffat argued.
Leis did change Heidy Truman's manner of death to "homicide" after meeting with police and prosecutors, but he testified at trial that he changed it back to "undetermined" after Conrad Truman's defense team showed him the corrected home measurements and other new information after the first trial was over.
"I feel sorry for Dr. Leis," Moffat told jurors. "He was duped by the police in this case. … If he can't tell you what happened here, I'm going to submit to you that nobody can."
Moffat further argued that gunshot residue (GSR) on Heidy Truman's right hand, particularly between the webbing of her thumb and forefinger, supports the defense's theory that she shot herself. Conrad Truman's hands were not tested for GSR because the husband had been instructed by the police to wash his hands, which were covered in his wife's blood.
But prosecutors argued in response that GSR is not reliable, and shows only that Heidy Truman was in the area when a gun was fired. Deputy Utah County Attorney Sam Pead called this and other defense theories "distractions" from the real evidence, which, he argued, points to murder.
He said that while Conrad Truman may regret it now, the man was "violent" and "uninhibited" on the night of the shooting after drinking whiskey and getting into an argument with his wife. Pead also accused the defendant of lying to police in order to obstruct justice.
"Why would someone lie about so many things relating to an investigation when they are innocent of wrongdoing?" Pead asked jurors. "Because they aren't innocent. He had to lie to protect himself."
Along with conflicting explanations, Conrad Truman also threatened the lives of first responders who came to the Orem home after his wife was shot. Defense attorneys said that this behavior was the result of shock and panic after his wife shot herself.
Judge Samuel McVey wrote in a ruling last year overturning the first conviction that the police officers who initially measured the Truman home recorded inches as feet, so a measurement of 139 inches became 13.9 feet — instead of just over 11.5 feet.
Where Heidy Truman was inside their home when she was shot, and how far she could have traveled after she was wounded before collapsing near a stairwell, were contentious points during the first trial.
The incorrect measurements, defense attorneys Moffat and Ann Marie Taliaferro have argued, could have led jurors to discredit Conrad Truman's testimony that his wife was shot in the hallway, because they would have shown that his wife had to travel down a hallway that was 2 feet longer than it actually was before falling. During the first trial, Leis testified that the woman could have traveled only about a foot or a foot-and-a-half after suffering a gunshot wound in the head.
Conrad Truman did not testify during his second trial.