MOBILE, Alabama -- In a drunken rage, Danny Hocutt locked his wife, Sandra, in their house for four days, shooting a gun at her several times and warning her not to call police, her lawyer told a jury Tuesday.
“She firmly believed that it was her or him, and she did what she had to do to survive,” said Greg Evans.
Hocutt, now 60, shot her husband as he lay in bed in February 2006 at their home near Dauphin Island Parkway.
Jurors heard opening arguments Tuesday in Sandra Hocutt’s murder trial in the courtroom of Mobile County Circuit Judge James Wood.
Hocutt, by her own admission, hired a labor crew to dig a hole in her backyard and later dumped her husband’s body there, concealing it with a layer of dirt. She then asked the crew to return and fill in the hole.
Three years later, Hocutt walked into Mobile police headquarters and confessed.
At that point, no one was aware that Danny Hocutt was dead. He was estranged from his son, who lives in the Atlanta area, according to testimony.
The prosecution says the facts of the case don’t support the defense’s theory of self-defense.
“The law is the law,” said Assistant District Attorney Eucellis Sullivan. “The defendant took the law into her own hands ... She was Danny Hocutt’s judge, juror and executioner.”
'One breakdown after another'
Jurors saw a videotape of the day that she turned herself in to police. Carrying bottles of medications in a plastic bag, she told detectives that since she’d killed her husband, “It’s just been one breakdown after another.”
She said that her husband had threatened to kill their neighbors and burn down their house, and had shot at her several times. “I wasn’t going to let him hurt me anymore,” she said. “I got the gun. He was passed out drunk on the bed. I shot him.”
Later she told the detectives, “I can’t live with it anymore.”
In court, Hocutt cried out loud, shook and rocked back and forth in her chair as the video played.
Evans said there is evidence supporting Hocutt’s story, including two bullet marks on the sink and cabinet island in their kitchen.
Steve Hocutt, Danny Hocutt’s 38-year-old son from a previous relationship, testified that he had a falling out with his father and hadn’t seen him since he was 18.
He said that he hired an investigative service to track down his father and find his contact information, but he never used it.
When asked why not, Steve Hocutt replied “I ask myself that every day.”
After Sandra Hocutt killed her husband, according to the prosecution, she told neighbors that he suffered from a fungus on his back and had gone to a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs medical facility in Tennessee.
Danny Hocutt served a tour of duty in Vietnam and wore a glass eye after being injured there. He reportedly suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.
He had been married to Sandra Hocutt for four months when he was killed. The marriage was her seventh.
In January, Hocutt pleaded guilty in federal court to keeping more than $100,000 in government checks intended for her husband and failing to report his death.
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