HOUSTON (Reuters) - A Texas jury on Thursday found dentist Clara Harris guilty of murder for running her unfaithful husband over with her Mercedes-Benz and then listened to testimony to help them decide whether she deserves probation or life in prison.
Harris, a 45-year-old native of Colombia and former beauty queen, ran over orthodontist husband David Harris last July 24 in the parking lot of a Houston-area hotel where he had gone with girlfriend Gail Bridges. She said it was an accident, but prosecutors said it was intentional.
Harris, who showed no emotion when the jury's decision was read, broke into violent sobs when stepdaughter Lindsey Harris, 17, was called to the stand in the punishment phase.
Lindsey Harris, who testified earlier against her stepmother and was in the $70,000 Mercedes when Clara Harris killed her father, told the jury she suffered depression that caused her to attempt suicide twice.
When Lindsey Harris was asked to show scars on her wrist, Clara Harris started crying bitterly, which prompted state District Judge Carol Davies to send the jury out.
As the jury filed out, the weeping Harris rose and cried out: "I'm so sorry, Lindsey. I'm so sorry, baby, I'm sorry." Lindsey Harris began crying for the first time in the trial, which prompted Davies to snap at the defendant, "Be quiet."
After the defense rested, Clara Harris removed her jewelry and was escorted to jail, where she was to spend the night. When the jury returns on Friday to begin deliberations, it will be the 11th anniversary of Harris' wedding -- Valentine's Day.
DEFENSE SEEKS LIGHT SENTENCE
According to testimony in the three-week-long trial, Clara and David Harris were happily married and running their dental business until early last year.
That is when David Harris, 44, began an affair with Bridges, his office receptionist, that caused a rift in his marriage and desperate action by Clara Harris to get her husband back.
He elicited promises from his wife to lose weight and get breast implants and, on the morning of his death, vowed to break up with Bridges and rehabilitate his marriage.
Instead, a suspicious Clara Harris found her husband and his lover at a hotel that night, striding out of the elevator, holding hands and smiling. Enraged, Harris charged in swinging, striking Bridges repeatedly until her husband, a martial arts enthusiast, threw her to the ground.
An angry Clara Harris, who was accompanied by her stepdaughter, went to her Mercedes. Lindsey Harris testified her stepmother wheeled the car toward David Harris, nearly striking a hotel employee, and gunned the accelerator when her spouse came into view.
A grainy videotape by a private investigator hired by Clara Harris to shadow her husband showed her circling around the parking lot several times in what prosecutors said was an intentional attack to run him over repeatedly.
The defense argued that Harris ran over her husband only once and without meaning to do so. She testified tearfully that she wanted to ram Bridges' car, but that she was so upset she did not know what she was doing.
