UPDATE: Pamela Ballin, convicted of bludgeoning her husband to death, was sentenced to life Thursday morning.
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ORIGINAL STORY: Pamela Ballin finds out Thursday if she will stand convicted of bludgeoning her husband to death. Her former in-laws find out if they will get closure in a five-year-old case.
DeKalb County Superior Court Judge Mark Anthony Scott stunned the district attorney and others last month when he said he was considering overriding the murder conviction. He allowed Ballin to remain free after the jury convicted her of murdering Derrick "Ricky" Ballin Sr. until a hearing to determine whether Ballin should be sent to prison.
“It is crazy,” David Ballin, Ricky Ballin’s son told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Wednesday. “Everybody is on pins and needles waiting for this thing to be put to bed. You get the jury verdict but it is still not final.”
He said he initially thought his father was killed in a home-invasion robbery as his stepmother told police but now believes it was what he called her greed and infidelity that led to his death.
Judge Scott signaled after the trial that he was troubled by the evidence and said he is considering setting aside the jury verdict and acquitting the 53-year-old Ballin from the bench. Another option is a mistrial because a crime-scene investigator went on vacation, ignoring the judge’s order to be available in court for further testimony.
The decision to allow Ballin to remain free made Ballin’s lawyer, Keith Adams, cautiously optimistic that the judge was troubled enough by the circumstantial evidence linking his client to the crime that he might render an extraordinary decision and free her despite the jury verdict.
He noted that 2009 murder wasn’t indicted until 2013 — never a sign of a strong case — and that Ballin had faithfully attended all court proceedings, the purpose of bond. He said much of the police investigation — which had initially reported that Ballin killed her husband for $750,000 in life insurance money and because he planned to divorce her for her alleged infidelity — had been rebuffed at trial.
But the trial, that initially attracted little media attention, went public when District Attorney Robert James asked the court to order Ballin’s arrest on the grounds that after the verdict she was now more likely to flee in the face of a possible mandatory life sentence.
That prompted Scott last month to order Ballin's arrest and imprisonment until the Thursday hearing.
David Ballin, of Boston, and his uncle, George Ballin, of New York, were initially fearful that the judge was likely to override the jury decision as happened in a Fayette County rape trial earlier this year.
Now, they are feeling more confident. James’ office has filed court challenges to the judge’s ability to direct an acquittal after a jury verdict.
“The directed verdict statute on its face … applies only during trial,” said Deputy Chief Assistant District Attorney Lenora Grant argued in a June 23rd court filing
Adams, on the other hand, contends the law gives the judge more authority for directed verdict of acquittal than even a mistrial at this juncture.
George Ballin says that regardless of the law he believes that his former sister-in-law will be headed to prison in part because of his confidence in the region’s sensibilities.
“We’ve very confident the judge will allow the conviction to stand. When a jury speaks, 12 individuals, it is hard for a judge to overturn it,” Ballin told The AJC by phone Wednesday while waiting at New York’s LaGuardia Airport for a flight to Atlanta. “I never heard of it in New York and New York is a very liberal state. You more expect that in New York than in a southern state like Georgia.”
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