One way or another, heartbreak is in store for the people invested in the fate of Michael McFarland, who will be sentenced Friday at San Juan County Courthouse.
Since April, when a jury convicted McFarland of negligent homicide in the killing of his wife, Jessica, 31, 6th Judicial District Chief Judge Greg Lyman has been inundated with letters. The majority urge Lyman to sentence McFarland to the maximum: three years in prison.
In the meantime, McFarland’s defense attorney, Joel Fry, has filed a motion for a new trial.
The motion for a new trial cites a letter written by Timothy Hewett – one of the 12 jurors who convicted McFarland – in which Hewett disavows his vote to convict McFarland of negligent homicide. In the letter, Hewett says, the “root of his agony” is that he “misinterpreted the definition of ‘negligence.’”
In a response, District Attorney Todd Risberg argues that Hewett’s after-the-fact objections fall short of the standard necessary to order a new trial.
According to several jurors interviewed after the trial, Hewett was one of the three who refused to convict McFarland of manslaughter and assault over the objections of the other nine jurors, insisting he was guilty of only the lesser charge, negligent homicide.
In addition to relentless last-minute lawyering, the prospect of McFarland’s sentencing also has inspired more than a dozen letters – all emotionally searing – from loved ones. Most of the authors still live in Silverton, the small town where Jessica and Michael McFarland grew up and were raising their children before the night she bled to death on the kitchen floor of their home.
In letter after letter, Jessica’s family and friends describe anger that McFarland might serve only three years in prison for killing his wife and deep regret that they did not help Jessica leave what, in retrospect, was clearly a living situation in which she feared for her life.
Jessica’s mother, Linda Davis, wrote that when Jessica finally plucked up the courage to leave McFarland, “she was dead within hours of picking up the (divorce) papers.”
“Almost every day since June 6, 2014, I relive the knock on my door in the middle of the night,” when authorities told her Jessica was dead and McFarland was in custody.
“I hear it, I see it, I feel it like a chain saw ripping through my heart and soul. The families, the children and the community have all had to pay the price for Michael’s behavior. ... I find no joy in asking for the maximum penalty for Michael,” she wrote.
But, “three years’ incarceration is a small price to pay for taking a life.”
Other family members take a different stance.
In a letter to the judge, Jessica’s father, Terry Davis, said Michael McFarland had been victimized by the justice system and should not receive any prison time.
“I believe that Michael is not guilty of anything of wrong doing,” writes Jessica’s father. “Michael has endured the bitter taste of the system and complied with everything,” Davis writes. “I pray you give Michael his boys, and my grandsons on June 12, 2015, oh what a joyous day that will be.”
One of Jessica McFarland’s sisters, Jodi Fraley, calls for McFarland’s release, saying whatever “hardships Michael and Jessica had, never once did Jess try to keep their children from their father. ... He has been a fantastic father and husband for over 13 years, his children worship him, he is their hero.”
One of the briefest letters calling for McFarland to serve the max comes from Tanya Kail: “Jessica mattered!”
cmcallister@durangoherald.com
