TROY, Mo. 鈥 A judge here Friday ordered a new trial for Russell Faria, finding that new evidence in the murder of Faria鈥檚 wife might have changed the minds of jurors who had convicted him of first-degree murder.
The ruling by 51黑料 Circuit Judge Steven Ohmer, who was lent to Lincoln County for this case, erases Faria鈥檚 2013 conviction and sentence of life in prison without parole. Ohmer will preside at the new trial, set for Nov. 2. He set bail for Faria at $500,000.
Prosecutor Leah Askey, who argued Friday against a new trial, declined to comment afterward.
Joel Schwartz, the defense lawyer, said, 鈥淲e look forward to our day in court 鈥 with all the evidence coming in 鈥 and we expect justice to prevail.鈥
Questions about the conviction were raised by a of the Post-Dispatch and Fox 2 news in 2014.
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Friday鈥檚 hearing by a Missouri appellate court March 6. That order focuses on how revelations about the actions and statements of Pamela Hupp, a friend of victim Elizabeth 鈥淏etsy鈥 Faria, would have affected the jurors鈥 decision. It also mentioned an allegation that Askey was having a secret romance with an investigator who worked on the case.
Askey was the first to raise the romance issue in court Friday. It was settled when the investigator took the witness stand and denied any romantic relationship.
After Ohmer announced his decision to give Faria a new trial, Askey asked whether he was basing that decision solely on the Hupp material or whether he had found any evidence supporting the relationship.
鈥淚 did not. I did not touch that,鈥 he said, saying that the only issue was Hupp.
Betsy Faria had changed the beneficiary on $150,000 of her life insurance to Hupp just days before the murder, leaving $100,000 in her husband鈥檚 name. Hupp said at one point it was because her friend, who had terminal cancer, intended to leave her husband and wanted to be sure her two daughters received funds.
Hupp said she had dropped off Betsy Faria, 42, at home outside Troy on Dec. 27, 2011, the night of the killing, and left.
Schwartz, the defense lawyer, had tried in the trial to portray Hupp as an alternate suspect, but the trial judge, Chris Kunza Mennemeyer, put limits on his questioning of her. Hupp testified that she put $100,000 of the $150,000 into a trust fund for the daughters.
But after the trial, Hupp said in a deposition in a filed by Betsy Faria鈥檚 daughters that she felt pressured by prosecutors and police to set up the trust. She established it five days before trial and withdrew $99,700 of the money two weeks after the trial ended, Schwartz said.
She also said in the deposition that the money was hers to use 鈥 one of a series of conflicting stories about what Betsy Faria wanted done with the money, according to the March court opinion.
In order to grant Faria a new trial, Ohmer had to find that the evidence was new to Faria, that it couldn鈥檛 have been uncovered by the defense before trial and that it was significant enough that jurors might have decided differently had they known about it. He also found that it would be admissible at trial.
In court, Askey had argued that the claims about Hupp were not new and that they had been repeatedly raised by Schwartz and rejected by Mennemeyer.
Hupp has denied any involvement in the murder, as has Russell Faria.
Four friends of Russell Faria said he was with them miles away in O鈥橣allon, Mo., at a time when Betsy Faria stopped answering her phone, an indication the murder had occurred. She had been stabbed 55 times. Russell Faria, then 41, found the body.
There was no blood on his clothing, which matched the clothes seen on surveillance video at a businesses where he had stopped on the way home. But police did find his wife鈥檚 blood on his slippers in a closet. The defense claims the slippers were planted to frame him.
Dozens of Faria鈥檚 supporters in the courtroom accepted the decision in relative silence, after being admonished by both Schwartz and a courtroom deputy not to react.
After the hearing, Mary Anderson, Faria鈥檚 cousin, said she was 鈥渧ery pleased鈥 and that, 鈥淎ll we wanted was another chance to prove his innocence.鈥 She said she would try to use her house to secure his bail.
Mike Corbin, who had testified as an alibi witness for Faria, attended Friday鈥檚 hearing and said, 鈥淭he whole world will see he didn鈥檛 murder his wife.鈥
Relatives of Betsy Faria declined to comment when leaving the courtroom.
