TROY, Mo. • In a courtroom here Thursday, a visiting judge ruled on a series of motions that will make the upcoming re-trial of a local man charged with murdering his wife sound very different from his first trial, and will likely feature defense claims that another woman was responsible.
Russell Faria was convicted of the Dec. 27, 2011, murder of his wife, Elizabeth "Betsy" Faria, at that trial in 2013. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
But Faria won a new trial after Faria's lawyers claimed that newly discovered evidence would have made jurors decide differently.
Jurors won't get that opportunity, however. On Thursday, Faria waived his right to trial by jury, meaning 51ºÚÁÏ Circuit Judge Steven Ohmer will hear the case.
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Also Thursday, Ohmer turned down a bid by Prosecuting Attorney Leah Askey to exclude any evidence of an alternate suspect, unlike a different judge's ruling at Faria's first trial.
Acknowledging that Ohmer had already ruled in June that Faria's lawyers could try to present a Faria friend as that alternate suspect, Askey asked him to reconsider, saying that there was nothing "directly connecting" the friend to the crime. Askey said the friend, Pamela Hupp, was a beneficiary of one of Betsy Faria's life insurance policies worth $150,000, dropped her off at the Faria home outside of Troy on the night of the murder and later changed her position about whether the money would go to Betsy Faria's daughters.
Faria lawyer Joel Schwartz responded that there was more than that. He said that Hupp changed her story about dropping Betsy Faria off, was present at the home for longer than she initially claimed and was there when Betsy Faria missed phone calls that she was expecting.
Hupp has denied killing Betsy Faria in interviews conducted by the Post-Dispatch and Fox 2 News as part of a , as has Russell Faria.
She was subpoenaed as a witness Tuesday night, according to court testimony.
Askey then said that Russell Faria's potential motive based on changes planned for a different life insurance policy should also be aired, saying we need a "complete picture."
Ohmer agreed, saying, "The facts are going to come in."
As they had several times already in the hearing, the lawyers continued to squabble, leading Ohmer to say to both sides, "Am I going to have to put you in the corner?" He had already admonished them to cooperate better.
Ohmer earlier had turned down a series of defense motions to limit witnesses ability to speculate on what Betsy Faria planned to do, or what someone told a witness about something that the witness didn't see or hear. Ohmer said that he would reserve many of those decisions for the trial.
He told Askey that he would likely not allow a witness to opine on whether Russell Faria's emotions during a 911 call to police seemed authentic, saying the tape would speak for itself.Â
He said he wouldn't accept testimony about polygraph tests.Â
And he said that he would not allow testimony about whether a rare condition called Cadaveric spasm, or "instantaneous rigor," would explain the condition of Betsy Faria's body and contradict defense claims that she'd been killed long before her husband arrived home. Unless defense attorneys "opened the door" to that testimony, he said.
There were also several cryptic references to requests for information from state agencies.
None of the court motions being discussed were publicly available. The entire file was sealed from public view this summer. do not even reflect the existence of a pending case against Faria.
And court clerks in August denied a Post-Dispatch reporter's request to see the physical file, view a printout of the motions and other filings or even find out the date of the next hearing.
Ohmer has said that the file was made non-public at the request of lawyers on both sides.
The trial is scheduled for Nov. 2. Faria is currently out of jail after relatives posted $500,000 bond.
