Judge denies new trial in murder by hot oil
Published 2:27 pm Friday, October 30, 2009
Circuit Court Judge Larry Bourgeois has denied Edna Mae Sanders’ request for a new trial in the death of her husband, who died a week after he was doused with hot cooking oil.
The 48-year-old Sanders, of Diamondhead, was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison after a trial in April 2008.
Her husband, Sherman Sanders, was 53 when he died in August 2006.
Sanders claimed the trial judge improperly allowed hearsay into evidence, excluded evidence of her allegations of her husband’s violent history and character and refused to grant jury instructions that she had no duty to retreat from her husband during the incident at their home.
Bourgeois wrote that it was proper for the jury to consider her husband’s statement to first-responders that his wife had burned him.