Jury rejects heat-of-passion defense

Friday, Aug. 27, 2004 | 9:33 a.m.

A Clark County jury on Thursday rejected a 45-year-old man's defense that he "acted in the heat of passion" when he killed his wife and convicted him of first-degree murder.

Frank Marques had confessed to a priest and to police the day after the August 2002 shooting of his wife, Candace Weckhorst, 35.

District Judge Sally Loehrer is scheduled to sentence Marques on Oct. 13.

The jury did find Marques not guilty of one of the other charges he had faced -- kidnapping. That charge was applicable, prosecutors said, because Marques lured Weckhorst first to an alley and later into her car so he could kill her.

Weckhorst's body was found in a car in an alley east of downtown Las Vegas after she had left work for the day to pick up her clothes from Marques. She had left Marques some time in the two weeks before she was killed.

The morning after the shooting, Marques went to Mass at Christ the King Catholic Church on Torrey Pines Drive at Tropicana Avenue, and in front of parishoners he he told the Rev. Bill Kenny he had killed his wife. He showed the priest the gun he had used. Kenny later called the police.

Marques would go on to admit to police in detail that he killed his wife.

Marques' lawyers did not dispute that Marques shot Weckhorst, but they said he should not be convicted of first-degree murder. They contend Marques pulled the trigger during a period when he was emotionally unstable.

Deputy Public Defender Jeffrey Banks said during closing arguments Marques never had a plan in place to kill Weckhorst, but instead acted out in the heat of passion against Weckhorst when her response to his asking her if she would be with another man was "it all depends."

"Can anyone honestly say the defendant's decision to shoot Weckhorst was not made in the heat of passion?" Banks said. "She had been gone for 11 days and he hadn't slept in five days. He said (in his statement to detectives) he was messed up, that he felt the whole world was on his shoulders."

Specifically, Banks said, Marques' statement to police that his "blood stopped pumping" after hearing Weckhorst say "it all depends" points directly to the shooting being a crime of passion.

"If this isn't in the heat of passion, I don't know what is," Banks said.

In hammering home his argument, Banks brought attention to the unique nature of what he was asking the jury to determine his client was guilty of.

"I'm asking you to convict my client of murder," Banks said. "I'm just asking you to go one step below what the prosecution is asking for because second-degree murder is appropriate. If any of you have a doubt as to whether the defendant was acting in the heat of passion, the benefit of doubt goes to Mr. Marques."

But Deputy District Attorney James Sweetin said the jury would have to look no further than the statements Marques made to detectives to see that the killing was deliberate and premeditated and therefore was first-degree murder.

"He (Marques) was deliberating about it for days and was weighing out all the alternatives," Sweetin said. "He left his house with the gun, but said he wasn't sure he would use it. This was not a rash impulse, but something he had been deliberating for some time."

Sweetin said Marques continued to think about whether he would kill Weckhorst right up to minute he loaded the gun, and even as he fired the second and third shots to "finish her off."

"The defendant (Marques) saw two guys walking down the alley and thinks, 'Oh my goodness, if I shoot her here I won't get away,' so he waits," Sweetin said. "He then puts Candy (Weckhorst) in the position he wants her in. Candy pleads with him and puts her hands up and his reaction is to put the magazine in the gun."

Sweetin said after shooting Weckhorst on the side of the nose he told police he thought "maybe she (Weckhorst) is suffering. Do I have the guts to shoot her again? Do I finish her off?" and he decided to shoot her again in the forehead.

In his statement to police, Marques "detailed his entire thought process as he shot Candy three times," Sweetin said.

The law defines first-degree as a "willful, deliberate and premeditated killing." All other murder is considered to be second-degree, according to the statute.

Under state law a killing is manslaughter if it was "voluntary, upon a sudden heat of passion, caused by a provocation apparently sufficient to make the passion irresistible, or involuntary, in the commission of an unlawful act, or a lawful act without due caution or circumspection."

Marques waived his right to a preliminary hearing in Las Vegas Justice Court in August 2002 and announced his intention to enter a plea agreement negotiated with the prosecution, but he decided against it at the last minute. Instead of facing a 40-year to life sentence as outlined by the plea agreement, Marques now could receive a no-parole life sentence.