Jury to begin deliberations on Monday in Earnest trial [The News and Advance, Lynchburg, Va.]

Apr. 3--BEDFORD -- Nine days, hundreds of pieces of evidence and more than 50 witnesses later, the case against a man accused of killing his estranged wife and staging her death to look like a suicide is coming to a close.

Attorneys for both sides presented their final arguments Friday afternoon. Now jurors have the holiday weekend to mull over what they've heard before reporting to court Monday to begin deliberations in the first-degree murder trial of Wesley Earnest.

The prosecution contends that Earnest, 39, was frustrated about a contentious divorce and under financial strain, and thought of his estranged wife Jocelyn as a roadblock to everything he wanted.

The defense is trying to show that two women in Jocelyn Earnest's life -- Marcy Shepherd and Maysa Munsey, who both worked with her at Genworth -- also had the opportunity and the motive to kill her.

A portion of the carpet from Jocelyn Earnest's house, stained with her blood and littered with strands of her hair, was rolled out before the jury box as Bedford County Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Wes Nance began to summarize the prosecution's case against Wesley Earnest.

"To find this man not guilty, you have got to believe a liar," Nance said. "Wesley Earnest wanted everyone to believe Jocelyn Earnest committed suicide, but he made mistakes."

Those mistakes, he said, came when Wesley Earnest told a Baptist preacher who was detailing Earnest's vehicle that he wouldn't be in Chesapeake on Dec. 19, 2007, the day his estranged wife was shot.

Another was made, Nance said, when Jocelyn Earnest fell on her back after the fatal shot and, though she was shot in the back of the head, the gun landed on top of her jacket.

Another mistake was when Jocelyn Earnest was dragged about two feet through her own blood that had begun to absorb into the carpet, Nance said. And he made a mistake, Nance said, when he typed a cold and unemotional suicide note, when his estranged wife was a prolific writer who filled 16 journals by hand.

Defense Attorney Joseph Sanzone told the court that the prosecution's entire case is circumstantial, and that the evidence points to his client's innocence.

"The real story about this case involves two separate days of two separate people whose lives had split," Sanzone said.

He contends that there was a storm brewing in Jocelyn Earnest's life, involving Munsey and Shepherd. Jocelyn Earnest may have been surprised by someone when she entered her house around 7:30 that night. She still wore her jacket and her shoes and had not let her dog Rufus out of his kennel.

Sanzone pointed to blood drops in the sink and hairs found in the bathroom that have been tested for DNA and do not match anyone investigators know to be related to the case.

"We have biological evidence from seven people, each one of whom being present when this lady comes in from the outside," Sanzone said. "Any one of those seven people, two or three of those seven, or all seven could have been there to meet her. ... The evidence is all of these seven people had a lot to hide."

Sanzone said those seven people could have been boyfriends or friends of Shepherd or Munsey. He painted a scenario where Jocelyn Earnest had grown tired of Munsey and the problems she brought into Jocelyn's house after Munsey was charged with using another woman's Social Security number to turn off that woman's electricity.

"I think she said, 'I'm sick of this, I want your creepy friends and you out of my house,'" Sanzone said, adding maybe those people had something to do with her death that afternoon.

Sanzone said his client worked all day and reported back to work the following morning. His fingerprints on the suicide note could have been on that piece of paper long before the note was written. And his cell phone remained east of Williamsburg.

"There is great and substantive evidence of other people that did harm to Jocelyn Earnest," Sanzone said. "If Jocelyn Earnest had two men in her life instead of Marcy Shepherd and Maysa Munsey and she had been keeping the two men apart, kissing one and keeping the other at the house ... If it was two men, I don't think any of us would have a lot of trouble with that. Could this just be as old as time?

"I submit to you that just because it's two women, it's not different."

Prosecutor Nance said the case isn't about those two women but about the continued deterioration of the relationship between Jocelyn Earnest and her estranged husband.

"I'd like for you to consider murder as a means of solving a problem," Nance said. "Jocelyn Earnest was killed because she's Jocelyn Earnest, and who do we know that has a problem with Jocelyn Earnest?"

When Wesley Earnest is trying to impress a woman, Nance said, he tells that woman he's worth $5 million, but when he's talking to his wife, he says he's worth $128.

"This mysterious stranger doesn't have to stage a crime scene because nobody knows who they are," Nance said. "(The defense) wants you to think about the hair that's right over there, but the forensic evidence right at her body -- they want you to ignore that."

Nance said the gun used to kill Jocelyn Earnest and the suicide note point to Wesley Earnest and no one else. One has to "dream up" motives for someone else to have committed the crime, he said, and such a person would have picked a time when Wesley Earnest has no alibi, chosen a piece of paper that just happened to have his fingerprints on it and used a gun that only links back to him.

"Wesley Earnest lied to you," Nance said. "He lied to you about his actions involving the death of Jocelyn Earnest."

The case now rests with the jury, which will begin deliberations at 9 a.m. Monday.

To see more of The News & Advance, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.newsadvance.com.

Copyright (c) 2010, The News and Advance, Lynchburg, Va.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.