On April 13, 2016, the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals upheld a jury's guilty verdict in the Julia Surbaugh murder case.
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After being convicted of first degree murder for
the second time by a jury, the West Virginia
Supreme Court of Appeals upheld her conviction
and life without mercy sentence on April 13, 2016.
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Surbaugh was accused of murdering her husband on August 6, 2009. Her first trial was held in 2010. She was found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Surbaugh appealed that conviction and in 2010 the Supreme Court reversed the conviction and sent the case back for a new trial on the sole basis of the trial court’s failure to instruct the jury on the use of good character evidence.
In 2014, the second trial was held with Judge Richard Facemire again presiding. The result was the same: guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to life without parole. One of the central issues in Surbaugh's appeal was her claim that even if the jury believed she fired the three shots into her husband's head, that he later died because of medical malpractice and not the bullet wounds. When the Supreme Court issues its recent decision, they disagreed, stating that:
"If a person inflicts a wound upon a person who thereafter dies, it is not a defense to a criminal homicide charge that medical care in the treatment of that wound contributed to the victim’s death. Only medical care that is shown to be the sole cause of death will operate to break the chain of causation and relieve the defendant of criminal responsibility."
The Court found that the evidence did not show that the medical care was the sole cause of death, but that death would not have occurred but for the shots fired by Surbaugh.
The full text of the Court's April 13, 2016 opinion can be found at this link:
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