Huston testifies killing of his wife was accidental

Kim Smith

Friday, March 29, 2002 | 9:09 a.m.

An 82-year-old Sandy Valley resident told jurors Thursday he accidentally shot his wife in the head when she grabbed for the gun during an argument over expensive car repairs.

Fred Huston, who was the only person to testify in his defense, said Eldona Huston, 80, took his semiautomatic pistol from his bedroom during their argument and fired it at him first.

He took the gun away, Huston said, and the gun went off during a struggle.

Jurors were to begin deliberating Huston's fate this morning. If they don't acquit Huston, they must choose between first-degree murder, second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and manslaughter.

Eldona Huston died Sept. 24 at the end of a 20-minute recorded phone conversation with a Metro Police 911 operator. Fred Huston can be heard in the background threatening several times to pull the trigger and ordering his wife to say goodbye.

The tape was played for jurors Wednesday and they would be allowed to listen to it during their deliberations.

As Huston testified Thursday, approximately a dozen of his wife's relatives watched from the gallery. The couple had been married four years.

"She fired the gun and that's the last I remember because I was falling," Huston said. "I hit my head on the bottom of the La-Z-Boy chair."

Huston said when he woke up, his wife was wiping the gun with a bathroom towel. He grabbed the gun from her and was holding it straight up in the air when she jerked his arm and the gun went off, striking her in the left eye.

"I did not aim at her. I did not intend to shoot her. I did not intend to kill her," a stoic Huston said.

Huston told jurors that when other people weren't around his wife tended to get "violent" with him.

He said he was still sorry she died.

"I loved my wife even though she gave me some hard ways to go sometimes," Huston said.

Under cross-examination from Chief Deputy District Attorney L.J. O'Neale, Huston insisted that when he struck his wife with a car four years prior to her death, breaking her legs, it was an accident.

O'Neale also grilled Huston about the conversation that can be heard on the 911 tape. Huston said he couldn't recall how many times he threatened his wife or how many times she told him she loved him in response.

"How many times did she say 'Fred, don't do this?' " O'Neale asked.

"I don't recall," Huston said.

Although Huston showed little emotion on the stand, he broke down in sobs outside the jury's presence during a break in the trial.

During his closing argument, O'Neale said Huston clearly lied on the stand. He reminded jurors that three seconds before Eldona Huston died she yelled "Ouch" and told the dispatcher her husband had thrown a glass at her.

That glass was photographed below her feet by crime scene analysts later that night.

"When you're holding a gun like this, you can't throw a glass," O'Neale said, his arms outstretched above his head, holding an imaginary gun. "It's just not true."

Huston should be convicted of first-degree murder because he made a "cold, calculated decision" to kill, O'Neale said.

Deputy Public Defender Jim Oronoz said that if Huston had wanted to kill his wife, he would have done it at the beginning of her conversation with the 911 dispatcher.

Huston was "stupid and irresponsible" and his actions during the last moments of his wife's life were "reprehensible," but he never intended to kill his wife, Oronoz said.

Oronoz urged the jury not to let their emotions over the 911 tape take over, noting everyone who heard the tape was saddened by it.

O'Neale disputed that during his rebuttal argument.

"There was one person who heard it who did not feel sad and that person was Fred Huston. There was one person who lived it and did not feel sad. Fred Huston," O'Neale said.

Eldona Huston lived 20 extra minutes because Huston enjoyed terrorizing her, O'Neale said.

"When he had enough, he shot her, he killed her, he murdered her," O'Neale said.

O'Neale urged the jury to "let justice be done."