A Genoa Township man convicted of murdering his girlfriend will not get a new trial, according to a Michigan Court of Appeals decision released Friday.
Joseph Damian Susalla was convicted in June 2010 of first-degree premeditated murder for strangling his girlfriend, Kelley Duberg, at her Wixom apartment May 22, 2009.
In his appeal, attorneys for Susalla argued the trial court erred when it allowed testimony from a woman who attended AA with Duberg about Duberg’s statement that she was afraid Susalla was going to kill her and testimony about his prior acts of domestic violence.
The appeals court rejected both those arguments.
At trial, Susalla testified that he “blacked out” and did not realize he was strangling Duberg, whom he claimed had kicked him in the groin and urinated on him.
Susalla and Duberg had been dating for several months when he killed her. Police discovered her body buried on property Susalla’s mother owns in a rural area near Grayling on June 5, 2009. Susalla was arrested within days.
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