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Jurors hear punishment testimony in Battaglia murder caseDALLAS (AX’) — Jurors in the cap-ital murder trial of John Battaglia listened Monday to a taped phone call that recorded a mother's anguished moments before finding out her two daughters had been shot to death.Mary Jean Pearle, who talked with Highland Park officer Catherine Jus-t ice on a cellular phone while waiting outside the apartment where the girls’ bodies were found.Jurors will decide whether Battaglia should receive the death penalty or life in prison. Prosecutors rested their rebuttal case on Monday. The defense present rebuttal witnesses Monday afternoon.The jury took only 19 minutes last week to find the 46-year-old guilty of fatally shooting 6-year-old Liberty and 9-year-old Faith in his apartment May 2, 2001, as his ex-wife listened on the telephone.Later, she waited outside the apart ment and talked on a cell phone with Justice while officers checked inside.“They’re dead,” she finally said on the 20-minute tape. He’s not in there with them though. He just killed them.”Jurors had solemn faces as the tapewas played, and Battaglia showed no reaction.When the jury deliberates punishment, members must answer questions about whether Battaglia would pose a continuing threat to society or whether his background, or any other mitigating circumstances, warrant a life sentence rather than death.Battaglia’s attorneys have presented testimony from psychiatrists who say he suffered from a bipolar disorder characterized by extremely manic and depressive behavior.Dr. Ja\ Crowder, chief of forensicl/ ’psychiatry at Texas-SouthwesternMedical School, testified Monday that the disorder, accompanied by an immature personality disorder and substance abuse, made Battaglia irritable, impulsive and lacking in judgment on the night of the shootings.Crowder said Battaglia’s emotional insecurity makes it difficult for him to tolerate frustration and sensitive to rejection. Those factors, along with fear that bis children were leading miserable lives, culminated the night of the shootings.“He was projecting onto them the hopelessness he felt about himself,” Crowder testified.(Yowder said there’s an 80-90 percent probability Battaglia would not pose a future danger if given a life sentence.“He just doesn’t have access to the typical victims he’s harmed in the past,” Crowder said.On Friday, a psychiatrist for theprosecution testified it was anger and retribution, not mental illness, that caused Battaglia to kill his two young daughters.“His anger got the better of him, and he acted it out in a very destructive way,” said I)r. Richard Coons, an Austin-based psychiatrist who interviewed Battaglia and his two ex-wives, and reviewed records and psychological test results.Prosecutors said Battaglia wanted to get back at Pearle because he believed she was depriving him of his children and because she was trying to have him arrested for violating a protective order stemming from an assault.
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Port Arthur News
Port Arthur, Texas, US
Tue, Apr 30, 2002
Page 3
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Jared T.
NA, NA 30 May 2023
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