On New Year's Eve, 2008, 54 year old Viola Pook allegedly set her husband on fire in the kitchen of their Rancho Dolores home; he died two days later from his burns. This afternoon a jury deliberated for four hours and forty two minutes before it found 54 year old Pook guilty of the murder of her common-law husband, 46 year old Orlando Mai Vasquez.
She left the courtroom handcuffed and escorted by police, but held a rag over her face. She will be sentenced on July 20th.
She never admitted to doing it - saying that she was in the home's main building, which is away from the kitchen when she heard a loud noise and screams. But that account was brought into questions when she could not explain burns to her forearm.
The prosecution called 10 witnesses - chief among them Sergeant Aaron Zuniga who testified that when he arrived at the scene Pook told him that she had set her common law husband on fire.
Vasquez received second degree burns to 70% of his body and died two days later at the KHMH.
Her attorney Hubert Elrington says she may be sentenced to life in prison, but he may appeal:
Hubert Elrington - Attorney
Well, we never fought a case, you know. I am not going to criticize the jury or the judge. We fight a case; sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. We'll have to see if there are any grounds for appeal, but we'll have to look at the summing up and things like that. That's not one of the cases where you ask for a death penalty or anything like that."
Roy Davis, Freelance Journalist
"So it's going to be life imprisonment?
Hubert Elrington
"I would suppose so - subject to appeal."
The case does evoke shades of Nora Parham - the only woman sentenced to hang. That was in 1963.
She was convicted of dousing her husband Ketchell Trapp with gasoline and setting him on fire in the latrine.
However, since then the standard for imposing the death penalty has increased significantly and it is only reserved for murders which are considered the worst of the worst - which this case does not represent.
