A Fulton County judge on Wednesday denied a new trial for the man currently serving 35 years for shooting his then-wife eight times outside of the couple’s Sandy Springs apartment.
Michael Parson, 45, was given the maximum sentence in May 2013 for the attempted murder of Adina Parson, who later filed for divorce. His request for a new trial was denied without a hearing, and he'll be returned to Baldwin State Prison.
Adina Parson, who re-took her maiden name Broome after the divorce, is confined to a wheelchair for life and is cared for by her mother, her family has said.
At his sentencing hearing in May 2013, Superior Court Judge Kelly A. Lee told a gallery packed with Broome’s friends and family that she wished she could have given Parson more time behind bars for the April 20, 2012, attack.
“It is a rare case, in my opinion, in Georgia that the sentencing range is too low,” Lee said to the shackled defendant. “This case is one.”
Adina Parson was an attorney with the state Department of Public Health and an active volunteer in her church when she shot eight times and left to die on the sidewalk outside of her apartment. But she survived the attack, spending several weeks at Grady Memorial Hospital before being moved to the Shepherd Center.
After the shooting, Michael Parson was at his wife’s bedside, family members said. But then, he was gone. And suddenly, he was the sole suspect in the shooting, police said.
On May 5, 2012, Michael Parson was arrested in Texas during a traffic stop. His arrest warrant and court documents later revealed that at the time of the shooting, Parson had been engaged to another woman and was secretly living a second life.
Rachel Harner later testified that she had just returned from Afghanistan and was planning to marry Michael Parson. But she had no idea he was already married, was actually 12 years older, and didn’t have cancer, as he’d told her.
The night he shot his wife, Parson claimed he'd been at the Veterans Administration hospital, near Decatur, getting treatments. But cell phone records placed him at the crime scene, police said.
