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Colton Pitonyak/Laura Hall
January 11, 2012
Court rejects latest Laura Ashley Hall appeal
The state’s highest criminal court today rejected Laura Ashley Hall’s latest challenge to her conviction and 10-year sentence for evidence tampering in the mutilation of a West Campus murder victim.
Without comment, the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed a lower-court ruling that denied Hall’s request for a new trial based on allegations that the Austin Police Department forensics laboratory had performed shoddy DNA analyses and had lax training and quality controls.
In its August ruling, the 3rd Court of Appeals in Austin noted that internal and external audits cleared the crime lab of the allegations, which were made by a former employee. The court added that Hall’s DNA expert testified that he reviewed the lab’s results and agreed with the findings.
What’s more, the lower court said, raising questions about the lab’s analysis would probably have hurt Hall’s case. Hall’s defense team emphasized the results because tests found none of Hall’s DNA on key items from the crime scene.
Hall originally received a five-year sentence for evidence tampering in the 2005 death of Jennifer Cave. Prosecutors said Hall helped her friend Colton Pitonyak dismember Cave’s body in his West Campus apartment before driving him to Mexico. Pitonyak is serving a 55-year sentence for murder.
In 2009, the 3rd Court of Appeals affirmed Hall’s conviction but threw out her sentence. That appeal backfired, however, when a new jury doubled her prison time, sentencing her to 10 years for the same crime — the maximum allowable sentence.
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November 3, 2011
Laura Hall denied parole
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles has denied parole to Laura Ashley Hall, who is serving a 10-year sentence for evidence tampering in the 2005 West Campus murder and mutilation of 21-year-old Jennifer Cave.
Jason Clark, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said the board voted to deny Hall parole on Oct. 28.
Hall’s case will next be reviewed by the board on Oct. 1, 2012, Clark said.
Cave’s partially dismembered body was found in the bathtub of the Rio Grande Street apartment belonging to Colton Pitonyak, a former University of Texas student who is serving a 55-year sentence for her murder.
In a 2007 trial, prosecutors accused Hall, at right, of helping Pitonyak remove Cave’s head and hands before the two friends fled to Mexico in Hall’s Cadillac. Jurors found Hall guilty of tampering with evidence and sentenced her to five years in prison.
An appeals court upheld her conviction but threw out the sentence because prosecutors withheld evidence about the state’s only sentencing witness.
A new jury gave Hall the maximum punishment — 10 years in state prison. Hall also received a concurrent one-year sentence for hindering apprehension.
If the 28-year-old serves all of her sentence, Hall would be released Aug. 23, 2018, Clark said. The department had previously reported a later potential release date but altered it after receiving information in February about the time she had served in the Travis County Jail, Clark said.
Read a Statesman story about phone calls Hall made from jail disparaging her parents and threatening Cave’s mother here.
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March 25, 2011
Colton Pitonyak's latest appeal dismissed
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has dismissed the latest appeal of Colton Pitonyak, who is serving a 55-year murder sentence in the 2005 West Campus slaying of 21-year-old Jennifer Cave.
In dismissing Pitonyak’s application for writ of habeas corpus last week, the court did not issue a written order but noted that the dismissal came under a section of Texas law that limits defendants’ appeals.
In his recent appeal, Pitonyak’s lawyers argued that it was Laura Ashley Hall who killed Cave, whose dismembered body was found in Pitonyak’s bathtub. Hall was convicted of tampering with evidence and hindering apprehension in the case and is serving 10 years in prison.
Read a Statesman account of Pitonyak’s most recent appeal here.http://www.statesman.com/news/local/documents-in-pitonyak-appeal-accuse-hall-of-making-711327.html
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January 11, 2011
Laura Ashley Hall denied parole
UPDATE: Rissie Owens, chairwoman of the parole board, said Hall’s parole was denied based on the seriousness of the crime “and the fact that the offense was so heinous.”
The three-member review panel voted 2-0 to keep Hall locked up. The third member only votes if the first two members split, Owens said.
Laura Ashley Hall, serving a 10-year sentence for evidence tampering in the mutilation of a West Campus murder victim, was denied parole in a recent review by the Board of Pardons and Parole.
Hall became eligible for parole in October, when her time served plus good time equaled one-fourth of her sentence, said Jason Clark, a Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman.
The Board of Pardons and Paroles declined to free Hall on Jan. 5. The family of murder victim Jennifer Cave was notified about the denial by a letter that arrived Monday.
The parole board will examine Hall’s case annually, Clark said. The next review will be in December.
Cave’s mother, Sharon Sedwick of Corpus Christi, said today she was gratified to learn that Hall will remain in Plane State Jail in Dayton, about 30 miles northeast of Houston.
“While we aren’t necessarily thrilled about having to do this every year, we will always do whatever we’ve got to do to keep Laura in jail,” Sedwick said. “We have a great group of friends writing letters every time it comes up. We have an army.”
Hall has been sentenced twice for tampering with evidence in the 2005 murder of Cave, whose mutilated body was found in the bathtub of an Austin apartment belonging to an acquaintance, Colton Pitonyak.
Pitonyak was sentenced to 55 years for Cave’s murder.
Prosecutors accused Hall of helping Pitonyak remove Cave’s head and hands before the two friends fled to Mexico in Hall’s Cadillac.
A first jury sentenced Hall to five years in prison in 2007. An appeals court upheld her conviction but threw out the sentence because prosecutors withheld evidence about the state’s only sentencing witness.
The defense strategy backfired in July when a new jury, after hearing taped jailhouse phone calls in which Hall threatened and disparaged Cave’s mother, gave her a maximum 10-year sentence. Hall also received a concurrent one-year sentence for hindering apprehension.
Though Hall began her new sentence in July, she received credit for time served from her first sentence.
Hall also was denied parole once while serving her first sentence. This was her first denial under the new 10-year term.
Rissie Owens, chairwoman of the parole board, has not yet returned a phone call seeking information on the reasons Hall was denied parole.
Hall has served one year and five months in jail, but her total time served is three years and 23 days when 11 months of good time and eight months of work time is added, Clark said.
If she serves all of her sentence, Hall would be released Aug. 12, 2019, Clark said.
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July 23, 2010
Laura Hall cites DNA lab issues in new trial request
Lawyers for Laura Ashley Hall have filed a motion for new trial in which they argue that Travis County prosecutors improperly withheld information about recent issues at the Austin Police Department DNA lab before Hall’s recent re-sentencing hearing.
A Travis County jury sentenced Hall to 10 years in prison on July 2 for tampering with evidence in the 2005 West Campus murder and mutilation of 21-year-old Jennifer Cave.
Prosecutors pointed to DNA evidence in arguing at the trial that Hall participated in the dismemberment of Cave’s body, which was found in Pitonyak’s bathtub with the head and hands removed.
In the motion, Hall’s lawyer Joe James Sawyer said that on June 28 — the day of Hall’s jury selection — prosecutors Allison Wetzel and Robert Smith approached him and his co-counsel and let them read a short document “outlining what they alleged were personnel issues by a disgruntled employee of the Austin Police Department Forensic Science Division.”
Sawyer said the document was a short synopsis of claims made by former Police Department DNA analyst Cecily Hamilton, who wrote a 25-page memorandum in February outlining issues at the lab, including problems she had with the casework of fellow analysts.
“After allowing us to read the document they took it back,” Sawyer wrote of the synopsis. “They assured us it did not reflect on the quality of the work performed at the Austin Police Department Forensic Science Division.”
Sawyer wrote that on July 7, along with other members of the defense bar, he received an email from prosecutors that included Hamilton’s memorandum and other documents related to the subsequent investigation, including responses to her complaints by co-workers.
DNA lab supervisor Cassie Carradine testified at Hall’s trial that Hall could not be excluded as a contributor to DNA found on a gun used to kill Cave, a towel bought at a hardware store and a pair of flip-flops in the bathroom.
Prosecutors said that the DNA on the towel puts her at the scene after the killing and that the flip-flops put her in the bathroom. Defense lawyers pointed out that the findings were not strong enough to show a conclusive link to Hall.
Neither prosecutors nor defense lawyers questioned Carradine about the issues raised in Hamilton’s memorandum or the investigation
In his motion for a new trial, Sawyer argued that prosecutors are required to give defendants all information that could raise questions about their guilt or impeach the credibility of prosecution witnesses. He noted that Hall’s original sentence of five years was thrown out when an appeals court found that prosecutors had withheld evidence about the state’s only sentencing witness. Her original conviction was upheld.
On July 7, Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg announced that she was sharing information on the DNA lab issues with defense lawyers and would seek an outside review of the DNA lab.
She told the American-Statesman that day: “Any time an allegation is made concerning the integrity of evidence in either a present case or a past case, we are required by law to turn that evidence over to the defense and let them see it and use it as they see fit.”
The motion for new trial will be considered by state District Judge Wilford Flowers, who presided over Hall’s trial.
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July 2, 2010
Laura Hall gets 10 years in mutilation case
UPDATE 5:20 PM
Laura Ashley Hall’s decision to appeal her original five-year sentence backfired Friday as a Travis County jury sentenced Hall to 10 years for tampering with evidence in the 2005 West Campus murder of Jennifer Cave.
The woman who prosecutors say helped now-convicted murderer Colton Pitonyak mutilate the 21-year-old Cave’s body before driving him to Mexico cried quietly after the jury foreman read the verdict.
Cave’s mother, who Hall threatened in phone calls that were recorded and played for the jury this week, cried immediately after the sentence was read. She hugged the lead detective, victim’s counselors and prosecutors, including Bill Bishop and Stephanie McFarland, whose missteps caused the original sentence to be thrown out.
“How can you be satisfied when your child is gone? When your child is dead? Do I feel like justice is done? Do I feel like the system worked? Yes.”
Sedwick, of Corpus Christi, said the thoughts of her daughter’s head and hands being cut off were replaced with joyous visions of her blue-eyed, auburn-haired daughter dancing in heaven with her recently deceased aunt.
It was the third trial that Sedwick endured with her husband Jim.
At Pitonyak’s trial in January 2007, a jury sent him to prison for 55 years. His appeals have been rejected. Later that year, another jury convicted Hall of tampering with evidence and hindering apprehension in the case. The verdict was upheld but the sentence was thrown out when a court found prosecutors failed to give the defense evidence about a sentencing witness.
Hall has maintained her innocence. Her lawyers spent much of the sentencing retrial trying to prove her innocence rather than in asking for a lenient sentence.
EARLIER TODAY
While Laura Ashley Hall’s lawyers continued to assert her innocence during closing arguments at her sentencing retrial Friday, prosecutors told the jury to lock her up for as long as possible to protect society.
Prosecutors contend that Hall participated in dismembering murder victim Jennifer Cave’s body in 2005. She was convicted in 2007 of hindering apprehension and tampering with evidence in the murder.
Hall’s friend, Colton Pitonyak, is serving 55 years in prison for Cave’s murder.
Prosecutor Christopher Baugh asked the jury to consider why Jennifer’s body was mutilated: “To hide identification, or is this just evil?”
“Was she not just saying F-you to Jennifer? Was she not just saying F-you to her family?” Baugh said.
Baugh quoted witnesses accounts of Hall’s comments after the murder.
“The whore deserved to die. She was a (expletive) bitch,” Baugh said.
“The only eerie part about it was the sound of cutting through the bone.”
Hall faces up to 10 years in prison on the tampering charge and up to a year on the hindering charge, but could get probation in both cases. She has already served about two years in jail.
While Baugh told the jury “she is guilty like it or not,” defense lawyer Joe James Sawyer said Hall will not relinquish the right to protest the original verdict.
“If the verdict of a jury of guilty also meant that you are factually guilty, then no one who is wrongly convicted can …say I am not guilty,” Sawyer said.
“Then the wrongly convicted would have to take a factual knee beside the guilty and say we’re guilty.”
Referring to jail calls, in which Hall makes a series of vulgar comments to her parents, some of them about Cave’s mother, Sawyer asked the jury what they would do if they were jailed on a wrongful conviction.
“Would you curse? Would you curse the court? Would you curse the people who prosecute you?”
Hall showed no visible emotion during the closing arguments. Cave’s mother and her husband sat quietly in the front row of court.
Prosecutor Allison Wetzel discounted Hall’s father’s testimony that she suffers from bi-polar disorder and said Hall deserved to be punished for her crime and society needs to be protected from her.
“What was done to Jennifer’s body… was pure hatred. Shooting into her severed head was pure hatred. And who hated her?” Wetzel said.
She held up a picture of Hall with Pitonyak in Mexico after the killing, both smiling widely as they sat in a child’s play area.
“This is who Laura Hall is,” she said. “This is someone who thinks that the rules do not apply to her… That is not a mental illness, that’s someone who is a sociopath.”
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Pitonyak's former roommate sentenced to 30 years
Colton Pitonyak’s former roommate was sentenced in Travis County on Wednesday to 30 years in prison for a 2007 aggravated robbery after state District Judge Charlie Baird found him in violation of his deferred adjudication, a form of probation.
Jason Mack, 28, in 2008 pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery in an Oct. 7, 2007, robbery of the Plaza de Mexico game room on U.S. 183 south of the Austin airport.
The deal came after a jury found Mack guilty of evading arrest but acquitted him of two counts of kidnapping and one count of aggravated robbery and failed to reach a verdict on two additional counts of aggravated robbery.
Mack admitted at that trial that he participated in the robbery, but said men who threatened his pregnant wife had forced him into it.
Prosecutor Jim Young said that on July 2, 2009, Mack was arrested at the Staybridge Suites Hotel on Interstate 35 in Round Rock after he was found passed out with 24 grams of methamphetamine and a semiautomatic pistol.
Charges in that case are pending in Williamson County but after a hearing this week, Baird found that Mack violated his probation by having the gun and drugs.
Baird could have sentenced Mack to up to life in prison.
Pitonyak, a former University of Texas student, is serving 55 years for murder in the death of Jennifer Cave, a 21-year-old legal assistant. Cave was found with her head and hands cut off in Pitonyak’s bathtub at the Orange Tree Condominiums on Rio Grande Street at 25th Street.
Pitonyak’s friend, Laura Ashley Hall, also a former University of Texas student, was convicted in 2007 of tampering with evidence and hindering apprehension in the murder. Her original sentence was thrown out on appeal and she has been in court this week for a new sentencing hearing.
The jury was deliberating Friday afternoon on her new sentence.
During Laura Hall’s initial trial for tampering with evidence, her lawyer complained that police never interviewed Mack as a suspect in the case.
During her sentencing retrial Thursday, Hall’s lawyers read into the court record Mack’s testimony from the previous trial in which he stated that a couple of days before the murder, his roommate Pitonyak had threatened to kill Hall with a gun.
“Sir, he had been up for about nine days. He probably would have used that gun on anybody about then,” Mack said.
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July 1, 2010
Hall said murder victim's mother 'is going down'
LIVE UPDATES: Reporter Steven Kreytak is posting live posts from Laura Hall’s sentencing retrial on Twitter. Click here to see his posts.
UPDATE 2:26 PM
In phone conversations from jail played in court Thursday, Laura Ashley Hall threatened to track down the jury that convicted her, said she had a pen pal who was a capital murder defendant and threatened the mother of murder victim Jennifer Cave.
In one conversation with an unknown male caller in August 2008, Hall asked: “Why is this such a big deal?”
The man said it was because of “that girl’s mother,” apparently referring to Sharon Sedwick, the mother of Cave, a 21-year-old legal assistant. Cave’s dismembered body was found in a West Campus apartment bathtub in August 2005.
Colton Pitonyak is serving 55 years for Cave’s murder. Pitonyak’s friend Hall was convicted of tampering with evidence and hindering apprehension in the case in 2007. Her five-year sentence was thrown out on appeal and she is in court this week for a new sentencing trial.
Hall, 26, faces up to 10 years in prison on the tampering charge and up to one year for hindering apprehension. She has already served about two years in prison.
“She’s going down,” Hall said of Sedwick. “I don’t know how and I don’t know when, but she’s going down.”
“She owes me a year of my life,” Hall said.
Hall said if she gets out, “I’m gonna be like hahahahaha in your face, bitch. You tried to ruin my life, well look at me now. I’m going home.”
Sedwick sat quietly in the first row of state District Judge Wilford Flowers’ court while recordings of the calls were played for the jury.
In March 2009, Hall spoke to Nesta Gerberding, someone prosecutors suggest she had met in jail. She told Gerberding: “I’m gonna find out who’s on my jury and I’m gonna say really nasty stuff to them. .. You ruined my life you (expletive.)”
EARLIER TODAY
In phone calls recorded from the Travis County Jail and played in court today Laura Ashley Hall made a series of disparaging remarks about the mother of Jennifer Cave, who was murdered and dismembered in 2005.
In one call from 2008, Hall spoke to her grandmother about a 48 Hours Mystery segment that had aired the night before. She asked her grandmother how she sounded and said: “I thought that dead girl’s mom sounded like a real moron.”
“Yeah, oh yeah,” her grandmother, Ardith Mosley, responded.
Hall said later: “She came off weird, like did I seem like a psychopath at all.”
Hall continued to assert her innocence in the phone calls and expressed her frustration at being in jail.
In a call between Hall and her parents in January 2008, they also talk about the 48 Hours piece.
Hall and her dad discussed an article he sent her. At one point Hall refers to “that psycho Engle,” perhaps referring to Scott Engle, Cave’s former boyfriend.
“I would’ve had to bitch slap him when I read that and I probably will when I get out of here,” Hall said.
“He’s a wacko,” Hall’s mom Carol said of Engle.
Carol Hall told her daughter that people thought the worst thing about Hall is that she got a “Colton” tattoo shortly after the murder.
“”That’s not even bad,” Hall said.
Hall’s mother told her that people who said bad things about the television show “hated that you were on TV and they weren’t.”
In another call from February 2008, Hall sounded increasingly desperate to get out of jail while talking to her grandmother and threatened to commit suicide numerous times.
“I’ve lost my home. I’ve lost everything. I really have nothing to live for,” Hall said.
At another point, she said: “Then we have garbage like Sharon Cave be heroes. God. God help us,” Hall told her grandmother of the murder victim’s mother.
“Yes, that’s just the truth,” Hall’s grandmother said.
Hall then said “That trash gets pity. God help us.”
Sharon Cave, whose last name is now Sedwick, shook her head in the front row of court while she read a transcript of the calls.
Hall later complained that that her parents won’t post her bond: “If I ripped my finger off, would that get their attention.”
At another point she said she’s “naturally evolving to where I’m practicing my punches, I’m practicing my kicks.”
Hall said her counselor is “obviously sympathetic to that awful slut with the blonde hair from the news and I hate that woman.”
“Yeah,” Mosely said.
Hall: “I hope she goes to hell. Frankly, I will take her there myself.”
Steven Kreytak has been posting on Twitter live updates of the trial. Below are his posts from this morning’s session.
“I hate her more than anything alive.” 36 minutes ago via web
“Yeah,” Mosely said. Hall: “I hope she goes to hell. Frankly, I will take her there myself.” 37 minutes ago via web
Hall said her counselor is “obviously sympathetic to that awful slut with the blonde hair from the news and I hate that woman.” 37 minutes ago via web
Hall said she’s “naturally evolving to where I’m practicing my punches, I’m practicing my kicks…” 38 minutes ago via web
Hall sounds like she’s throwing a sort of verbal tantrum and her grandmother is just affirming everything she says, promising to help someho 39 minutes ago via web
“He’s still there,” Mosley told Hall of God. 40 minutes ago via web
“well which one of those things gets me revenge or out of jail?” 41 minutes ago via web
Hall said in church they tell her: “pray for your enemies, forgive them and keep the faigth..” 41 minutes ago via web
Hall: “My dad said ‘we don’t want to go down with you.’” 42 minutes ago via web
Hall complains that her parents won’t post he bond: “If I ripped my finger off, would that get their attention.” 42 minutes ago via web
“Yes, that’s just the truth,” Hall’s grandmother said. Hall: “That trash gets pity. God help us.” 42 minutes ago via web
“Yes, that’s just the truth,” Halls grandmother said. Hall: “That trash gets pity. God help us.” about 1 hour ago via web
“Then we have garbage like Sharon Cave be heroes. God. God help us,” Hall told her grandmother of the murder victim’s mother. about 1 hour ago via web
“I’m going from jail to the airport. I’m done with the United States.” -Hall about 1 hour ago via web
“I’ve lost my home. I’ve lost everything. I really have nothing to live for.” about 1 hour ago via web
Hall is angry she’s stiill in jail and wants to die or be set free. “I’m done,” she told her grandmother. about 1 hour ago via web
Hall said “it seems like htey are just trying to force me to commit suicide… I’m mean as hell but I’m not that mean.” about 1 hour ago via web
Hall told her grandmother that taking her case to trial was stupid and that she is gonna be “mistreated and abused until I’m dead.” about 1 hour ago via web
The next call was Feb. 5, 2008 bt Hall and her grandmother, Ardith Mosley. about 1 hour ago via web
“I didn’t get paid,” Laura Hall said. about 1 hour ago via web
Carol Hall later said: “Ms. Cave was really vague… Ms. Cave would really hate it if she knew you got paid.” about 1 hour ago via web
“They hated that you were on t.v. and they weren’t,” Carol Hall said. about 1 hour ago via web
“That’s not even bad,’ Laura Hall said of her “Colton” tattoo. about 1 hour ago via web
Carol Hall told her daughter that people thought the worst thing about her is that she got that tattoo. about 1 hour ago via web
woops. “got no good feedback” in jail about the 48 Hours piece. about 1 hour ago via web
Hall told her parents she “got no good feedback” about 1 hour ago via web
“He’s a wacko,” Hall’s mom Carol said of Engle. about 1 hour ago via web
“I would’ve had to bitch slap him when I read that and I probably will when I get out of here…” about 1 hour ago via web
Hall refers to “that psycho Engel,” perhaps referring to Scott Engle, victim Jennifer Cave’s former boyfriend. about 1 hour ago via web
They also talk about the 48 Hours piece. Hall and her dad talked about an article he sent her. about 1 hour ago via web
The second call, between Laura and her parents Loren and Carol Hall, was recorded in Jan. 2008. about 1 hour ago via web
Hall’s grandmother said she didn’t think the reporter in the 48 Hours piece was very pretty. Hall thought it was great, “real flashy” about 1 hour ago via web
“SHe came off weird, like did I seem like a psychopath at all?”Hall asked her grandmother. about 1 hour ago via web
“Yeah, oh yeah,” said Ardith Mosley, Hall’s grandmother. about 1 hour ago via web Hall said: “I thought that dead girl’s mom sounded like a real moron.” about 1 hour ago via web
First call is from January 2008 between Hall and her grandmother. In it Hall asked how she though she looked, presumably on 48 Hours. about 1 hour ago via web * Remember, Hall has already been found guilty. This is the punishment phase. about 1 hour ago via web
While the 48 Hours interviews included many denials of guilt by Hall, they were presented by prosecutors. about 1 hour ago via web
Next up, the jail calls Hall made from jail. about 1 hour ago via web
“I spent 21 months for something I didn’t do, what more do you want?” Hall said. about 1 hour ago via web
The courtroom is silent as clips of Hall’s comments about how she’s stupid with men, gald to be out of jail.” about 1 hour ago via web
The previous clips were from a 48 Hours in 2007. Next, they’re showing clips from a 48 Hours from earlier this year.” about 1 hour ago via web
She later said: “I had just gotten away from him. I wasn’t ready to be rational yet.” about 1 hour ago via web
Hall: “I wasn’t able to process … I didn’t know who she was.” about 1 hour ago via web
Interviewer: “Did you have any concern for the girl who was dead?” about 1 hour ago via web
Hall: “It didn’t seem like a good move… There was nothing I could have done to save her at that point.” about 1 hour ago via web
Interviewer: “I never occurred to you to call the cops? Or your folks, or your friends, anyone?” about 1 hour ago via web
“this person that I’ve had sex with has… killed somebody.. you kind of think am I next?” about 1 hour ago via web
“I remember him goading me out of the bathroom with a knife that had blood on it up to the hilt. The last thing you want to think is…” about 1 hour ago via web
“And he says come here. There was a dead woman curled up in his bathtub. ” about 1 hour ago via web
“He answered the door really kind of paranoid and fearful. And I’m kind of like sitting up, you know, Colton wht’s the deal?” about 1 hour ago via web
“I was really attracted to Colton from the beginning… He was hot. .. It was great.” about 2 hours ago via web
“I can’t believe it… It doesn’t seem real…. This is not happening.” about 2 hours ago via web
“It was really Colton….Colton has murdered somebody, why would I … come in and like start mutilating the body?” about 2 hours ago via web
“I had a whole life in front of me. I had plan. … People thought I was some kind of monster. .. People blame me for everything.” about 2 hours ago via web
“It’s not cute. I’m not going to let these people get away with this” (Hall on 48 Hours.) about 2 hours ago via web
“I couldn’t wrap my mind around, why is this happening.” about 2 hours ago via web
Hall on 48 Hours Mystery: “Being locked up, that was .. .beyond my worst nightmare. … It was ridiculous.” about 2 hours ago via web
They’re about to play parts of an interview Hall gave television news show 48 Hours. Hall was on the show twice. about 2 hours ago via web
Sharon Sedwick, Cave’s mother, sat up straight in her seat and took a long slow breath when she was the picture. about 2 hours ago via web
Prosecutor showed jury a pic of Hall and Pitonyak in Mexico, smiling widely in a child’s play area. Pitonyak has a toy sombrero on. about 2 hours ago via web
Hall’s plans, listed on FB profile before Cave’s killing: “I should really be more of a horrific person. It’s in the works.” about 2 hours ago via web
- “…and if you can find all of that within you and control it then you deserve to be set apart.” about 2 hours ago via web
Hall’s fav. quote listed on Facebook on 8/15/05: “You’re part music and part blood, part thinker and part killer…” about 2 hours ago via web
Among Hall’s fav movies listed on FB profile were gangster flics. Pulp Fiction, Scarface, Carlito’s Way and Donnie Brasco about 2 hours ago via web
They are showing screen shots from Laura Hall’s Facebook profile now, last updated 8/15/05 about 2 hours ago via web
At 7:42 p.m. Colton’s cell phone shows he was still in Austin. By 10:30 p.m. he was in San Antonio on his way to the border. about 2 hours ago via web
At 3:47 p.m. Hall bought gas at Valero on east Oltorf. about 2 hours ago via web
At 3:18 p.m. Colton Pitonyak went to Breed & Co. hardware store and bought hacksaw, cleaning supplies 8 minutes later he went to Burger King about 2 hours ago via web
At noon on 8/17/05 Laura Hall withdrew money from ATM. about 2 hours ago via web
they spoke again for four minutes at 6:36 a.m. and 7:35 a.m. about 2 hours ago via web
At 6 a.m. on 8/17/05 Colton Calls Laura. Call lasts 13 minutes. about 2 hours ago via web
At 5:14 a.m. on 8/17/05 Laura Hall texts Colton: “What do you mean.” about 2 hours ago via web
At ab 3 a.m. Colton Pitonyak went to his friend and neighbor Nora Sullivan’s apt. and said he had just gotten into a shootout with Mexicans. about 2 hours ago via web
At 1:05 a.m. on 8/17/05 Jennifer called her friend Michael Rodriguez, said she was with Colton and she was alright. about 2 hours ago via web
That night, 8/16/05, Cave was seen on 6th St. with Colton Pitonyak, Hall texted Colton at 11:58 pm.: “ugh you should have called me back.” about 2 hours ago via web
Det. Gilchrest is going over timeline of known events surrounding Jennifer Cave’s murder. Beginning on 8/16/05. about 2 hours ago via web
I’ll be live Tweeting Hall testimony all day. Looking fwd to hearing what she said in recorded jail calls that will be played. about 2 hours ago via web
Jury is entering court now for the 3rd day of testimony in the Laura Ashley Hall sentencing retrial. Catch up here. http://bit.ly/9thOm1 about 2 hours ago via web
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June 30, 2010
Hall's statements about Cave murder discussed at trial
UPDATE 3:20 PM
The jury in Laura Ashley Hall’s sentencing retrial is hearing this afternoon about statements Hall is accused of making about the murder and mutilation of Jennifer Cave.
One woman who was locked up with Hall in September 2005, a month after Cave’s murder, said Hall referred to Cave by a vulgar name and called her “a stripper.”
That woman, Olena Grayson, said Hall also told her “the eeriest part was cutting through bone.”
Christie Freeman, another woman who was in jail with Hall around that time, said that during a group therapy session Hall said: “the whore was just a dancer, she deserved to die.”
Freeman and Grayson did not testify at Hall’s initial sentencing trial. Henriette Langenbach, another inmate who testified this afternoon, had testified in Hall’s previous trial. Langenbach shared a cell with Hall.
Langenbach said Hall spoke to her repeatedly about the events surrounding Cave’s murder. In those conversations, Hall referred to Cave as a “whore,” Langenbach said.
Langenbach said Hall told her that Pitonyak called Hall over to his apartment after shooting Cave and showed her Cave’s body in her bathtub. Hall later sent Pitonyak to the store with a shopping list and went to lunch while Pitonyak was at the apartment executing their plan to cut up the body.
Hall, according to Langenbach, said Pitonyak had a scholarship to the University of Texas and Cave was “just a waitress” and Hall “couldn’t understand the fuss” about the murder.
“Did you ask Laura Hall why she thought it would be a good idea to cut up a body?” prosecutor Allison Wetzel asked.
“For identification purposes,” Langenbach said.
Langenbach is on probation for securing a document by deception and misapplication of fiduciary property.
On cross examination Hall’s lawyer, Joe James Sawyer, noted that Langenbach has previous convictions from New Zealand centering on an adoption scam.
Sawyer suggested that Langenbach lied about her interactions with Hall to gain a favorable disposition in her own case from prosecutors.
Langebach said she struck a plea deal before revealing the conversations.
Sawyer asked: “Laura hall never told you that she was physically involved in dismembering Jennifer Cave’s body, right?” Sawyer asked.
“That’s correct,” Langenbach said.
Follow live updates of the trial on Twitter here.
EARLIER TODAY
Laura Ashley Hall’s sentencing retrial continued today with the jury viewing gruesome pictures of Jennifer Cave’s mutilated body and hearing from a medical examiner about Cave’s injuries.
Former Travis County deputy medical examiner Elizabeth Peacock said that Cave, 21, died of a gunshot wound that tore through her chest and into her aorta. She said her head and hands were removed after her death.
Also after Cave’s death, someone inflicted a cluster of stab wounds to her head and to her upper chest, Peacock said. Someone also fired a gunshot into Cave’s head after it had been removed from her body. One stab wound to Cave’s hand was inflicted around the time of death, Peacock said.
For someone who did not have experience in amputations and who was not using power tools, Peacock said, removing body parts would be a “long and laborious process.”
Cave’s naked body was found in August 2005 in the West Campus apartment of Colton Pitonyak, who has been convicted of Cave’s murder and is serving 55 years in prison.
Prosecutors argue that Hall went to Pitonyak’s apartment the morning after Cave was fatally shot and participated in an aborted cover-up. Witnesses at her 2005 trial said that after Hall’s arrest in the case she bragged about cutting a body.
Hall, a University of Texas student at the time of the killing who has since graduated, was convicted of tampering with evidence and hindering apprehension at the previous trial. An appeals court upheld the conviction but threw out the five-year sentence a jury assessed.
A new jury was seated Monday and will decide a new sentence, likely by the end of the week. She faces up to 10 years in prison on the tampering-with-evidence count and one year on the hindering-apprehension count. She has served almost two years in jail.
Read a Statesman story on the first day of Hall’s sentencing retrial here.
Follow live updates of the trial on Twitter here.
Permalink | Comments (16) | Categories: Colton Pitonyak/Laura Hall
June 29, 2010
Jury learns of Hall's 'Colton' tattoo, other details
UPDATE 3:30 PM
Ryan Martindill said that his friend Laura Ashley Hall called him in 2005 and asked to spend the night at his Austin apartment. It was after Hall and Colton Pitonyak had been ejected from Mexico and Pitonyak was charged with Jennifer Cave’s murder but before Hall was charged in the case.
Martindill told a jury that he agreed to let Hall stay one night and when she arrived she told him she had nothing to do with Cave’s killing and that Pitonyak, now serving 55 years for Cave’s murder, would be exonerated. That night Hall got a “Colton” tattoo on her ankle, Martindill said.
By the end of the night Martindill had reconsidered his offer and dropped Hall at a hotel.
He recounted the events before a Travis County jury today during the first day of Hall’s sentencing re-trial. A previous jury found Hall guilty of tampering with evidence and hindering apprehension in Cave’s murder and sentenced her to five years in prison.
An appeals court overturned that sentence and a recently seated jury will decide Hall’s new punishment this week. She faces up to 10 years in prison.
Prosecutors have spent much of the day presenting the new jury evidence on the 2005 murder and on Hall’s involvement.
The jury heard that Cave, 21, had been excited about a new job at a law firm when she went out with Pitonyak on Sixth Street on Aug. 16, 2005. That night Cave told a friend that Pitonyak was crazy and later told a friend by phone that he was acting erratically — including by urinating on someone’s car — but that she did not feel unsafe.
Martindill told the jury that Hall had been at his apartment the night of the killing before getting a call from Pitonyak and going to meet him. They heard that Pitonyak went to Breed & Company hardware store on Aug. 17 and bought cleaning supplies and a hacksaw after telling the owner he wanted to cut up a turkey.
Cave’s mother’s boyfriend found her body in Pitonyak’s apartment on Rio Grande Street in West Campus on Aug. 18.
The jury saw grisly crime scene photographs from Pitonyak’s apartment — Cave’s head and hand were removed and placed in bags on the floor.
Witness Nora Sullivan told the jury that in the months after the killing, Hall told her that she had to motivate Pitonyak to dismember Cave’s body. She could not recall where she was when that conversation happened and Hall’s lawyer suggested that she made the story up, noting that she had not reported the story in initial interviews with police and prosecutors.
EARLIER TODAY
Sharon Sedwick sat in the front row of Judge Wilford Flower’s court this morning and battled to control her emotions as the details of her daughter’s grisly 2005 killing were revealed to a new jury.
She slumped in her seat during opening statements as prosecutor Allison Wetzel told the jury about the day Jennifer Cave, 21, was found in a West Campus apartment bathtub, her body mutilated.
Sedwick shook her head repeatedly as Wetzel noted that her daughter’s head and her hands were in bags and fought back tears as some of the witnesses in the case — several of them friends of her daughter — stood before Flowers to be sworn in.
Sedwick endured the 2007 trial that saw Colton Pitonyak convicted for Cave’s murder and sentenced to 55 years. She also sat through the trial later that year that saw Pitonyak’s friend, Laura Ashley Hall, convicted of hindering apprehension and tampering with evidence in the death.
Hall’s 5-year sentence was overturned by an appeals court, and opening statements in her new punishment trial began this morning.
“I am getting a little tired,” Sedwick said outside Flower’s court during a morning break.
Jay Janner/AMERICAN-STATESMAN — Laura Hall talks to her attorney Joe James Monday before the start of jury selection in her new sentencing trial at the Travis County Courthouse.
Hall faces up to 10 years for the tampering conviction and one year for hindering apprehension. She has already served about two years in jail.
Prosecutors say that Hall participated in the mutilation of Cave’s body. Hall maintains she is innocent.
Her lawyer, Joe James Sawyer, said the jury should give her probation.
The trial is expected to last through the week.
Permalink | Comments (27) | Categories: Colton Pitonyak/Laura Hall
June 28, 2010
Jury selected in Laura Hall's sentencing re-trial
UPDATE 6:41 PM
A jury of nine men and three women has been seated to hear Laura Ashley Hall’s sentencing re-trial. Opening statements begin Tuesday at 9 a.m.
UPDATE 4:17 PM
A group of Travis County residents is being questioned in a downtown courtroom this afternoon on their ability to give a fair sentence to Laura Ashley Hall, who stands convicted of tampering with evidence and hindering apprehension in the 2005 West Campus murder of Jennifer Cave.
Prosecutor Allison Wetzel questioned members of the group — at the outset of questioning there were 113 — for more than an hour this afternoon on issues such as pretrial publicity and the purpose of the criminal justice system. Hall’s defense lawyers began their own questioning after the group was parged to 76. At the end of the day, the lawyers will choose 12 jurors who will assess Hall’s punishment.
Opening statements are scheduled for tomorrow morning. The punishment trial is expected to last through the week.
Hall faces up to 10 years in prison. She was sentenced to five years after she was convicted during a 2007 trial. The verdict was upheld but the sentence was tossed after an appeals court found prosecutors unfairly withheld evidence on the state’s only sentencing witness.
Cave had been fatally shot and her head and hands had been severed when she was found in Colton Pitonyak’s Rio Grande Street apartment in August 2005. Pitonyak is serving 55 years for murder. Prosecutors argued at Hall’s previous trial that she helped him in the aborted cover-up of the crime. One witness said she bragged about cutting up a body.
Even before they were asked about it by prosecutors, several potential jurors said they would have a tough time being fair to Hall. One cited “her attitude.”
When Wetzel asked the 113 original panel members whether they had heard of the case, almost all of them raised their hands. Wetzel then asked how many had formed an opinion on the sentence Hall should receive and 37 said they had. Of those, 25 of the prospective jurors said they could not set aside that opinion and decide the case on the evidence they would hear in court.
Wetzel also asked each prospective juror whether they believe that rehabilitation or punishment should be the main goal of the criminal justice system. Some declined to answer and the ones that did were fairly evenly split, with just more than half answering rehabilitation.
Hall is sitting at the defense table facing the prospective jurors, who are jammed into rows of bench seating in the 250th District Court, located n the Heman Sweatt Travis County Courthouse. State District Judge Wilford Flowers moved the proceedings from his usual courtroom in the county’s criminal courthouse to accommodate the larger than usual jury panel.
Hall has not spoken during the jury selection.
Prosecutor Stephanie McFarland, whose previous conduct in the case was questioned by an appeals court, was not in court. Another assistant is sitting at Wetzel’s side. Wetzel said McFarland remains part of the trial team and declined to say why she was not in court.
EARLIER TODAY
With Laura Ashley Hall’s sentencing retrial set to begin with jury selection this afternoon, Hall’s lawyers unsuccessfully sought this morning to delay the trial with a new claim of prosecutorial misconduct.
Defense lawyer Joe James Sawyer said outside court that last week the defense received documents from prosecutors that included information about a witness who could further Hall’s claim that she had nothing to do with an aborted cover-up of 21-year-old Jennifer Cave’s 2005 murder. That witness was a former Travis County jail cellmate of Colton Pitonyak, Hall’s friend who is serving 55-years in prison for Cave’s murder.
Sawyer (pictured, with Hall in court today) said he had not received any information about that witness, who was interviewed in 2006, prior to last week. He said by not disclosing the information before Hall’s 2007 trial, prosecutors violated constitutional protections requiring defendants to receive all information that could raise questions about their guilt or impeach the credibility of prosecution witnesses. Sawyer also said the disclosure so close to the retrial has given the defense inadequate time to prepare.
Without explanation, Flowers denied Sawyer’s motion for a continuance this morning. Flowers also denied Sawyer’s request that he sanction prosecutors.
The case remains set for jury selection this afternoon with opening statements set for Tuesday morning.
Hall, 26, was convicted in 2007 of tampering with evidence and hindering apprehension in Cave’s murder. Prosecutors argued that Hall participated in the dismemberment of Cave’s body, which was found in the bathtub of Pitonayak’s West Campus apartment with the head and hands removed.
An appeals court upheld Hall’s conviction but ordered a new sentencing trial after finding that prosecutors unfairly withheld evidence about their only sentencing witness.
The court, whose decision was upheld by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, found that prosecutors withheld information about cab driver Doug Conley, who told the jury that Hall made a disparaging remark about Cave during a cab ride following the murder. Hall’s defense did not learn until after the trial that Conley had failed to pick Hall out of a police lineup.
The 3rd Court also cited two other examples of information that prosecutors failed to give Hall’s lawyers prior to her previous trial in violation of a judge’s order or constitutional protections, but the court ruled that those violations did not affect the trial outcome.
“It’s a question of how much do you allow?” Sawyer said outside court. “How much outright disobedience of court orders (and constitutional protections) … do you allow?”
Sawyer said in an interview that in 2006 a man named John Williams told investigators that Pitonyak had a plan to dispose of Cave’s body in barrels but that the barrels would not fit in his car. Williams did not tell investigators that Pitonyak mentioned Hall, only that he went to Mexico with “a friend,” Sawyer said.
While Hall’s guilt or innocence will not be before a jury during the sentencing retrial, prosecutors plan to introduce evidence of Hall’s role in the crime. Defense lawyers plan to continue disputing that she played a role.
Prosecutor Allison Wetzel argued to Flowers that the information about Williams’ interview has been in files available to the defense.
Prosecutors Bill Bishop and Stephanie McFarland had previously prosecuted Hall and Pitonyak. Wetzel replaced Bishop after the appeals court ruling. McFarland had remained on the case, but was absent from court today.
Another judge last month found that McFarland withheld from the defense critical information in a 2006 aggravated assault trial. The judge dismissed the conviction and probation sentence in that case.
A panel of about 120 prospective jurors will be questioned starting at 1:30 p.m. in the 250th District Court in the Heman Sweatt Travis County Courthouse, the county’s largest courtroom. Opening statements are scheduled for Tuesday morning in state District Judge Wilford Flowers’ courtroom, the 147th District Court in the Blackwell Thurman Criminal Justice Center.
Follow updates on the Hall sentencing hearing all week at statesman.com/austinlegal and on Twitter.
Photo: Jay Janner/American-Statesman
Permalink | Comments (30) | Categories: Colton Pitonyak/Laura Hall
June 2, 2010
Hall trial date set; defense seeks prosecutor's recusal
Laura Ashley Hall’s new sentencing hearing is set to begin with jury selection June 28.
State District Judge Wilford Flowers said during a hearing on the case today that 120 Travis County residents will be summoned to appear as potential jurors at 1:30 p.m. and the jury will begin hearing evidence the next morning.
Hall, 26, stands convicted of tampering with evidence and hindering apprehension in the 2005 murder of 21-year-old Austin legal assistant Jennifer Cave, whose mutilated body was found in Colton Pitonyak’s West Campus bathroom. Pitonyak, 27, is serving 55 years in the murder. At her 2007 trial, prosecutors argued that Hall dismembered Cave’s body. The jury that convicted her during that trial sentenced her to five years in prison.
An appeals court upheld the conviction but found that prosecutors unfairly withheld from defense lawyers information about a sentencing witness and ordered a new sentencing trial.
Prosecutors have said the new jury will hear much of the evidence against Hall. Assistant District Attorney Allison Wetzel said during today’s hearing that the state’s case will take about two days. Defense lawyer Jim Sawyer said he would have no more than one day of evidence to present.
Sawyer requested a delay in the case today so he could order further DNA testing. Flowers denied that motion after noting that the matter would not inform the jury’s decision on punishment.
Hall faces up to 10 years in prison. She is currently in jail, where she has spent about two years off and on since her 2005 arrest. She has said she is innocent in the case.
In a recent appeal, Pitonyak’s lawyers attempted to make a case that it was Hall and not Pitonyak who killed Cave. That appeal relied heavily on witnesses who have reported that Hall made statements incriminating herself in the killing.
That appeal also said that female DNA was found under Cave’s fingernails and on blood inside her mouth but did not say who it came from. The appeal cited a DNA testing report conducted by Pitonyak’s lawyers in preparation for his trial. The report did not say whether the DNA had been compared with known samples to discover its origin.
During Wednesday’s hearing, Wetzel said an Austin Police Department technician recently found that it was Cave’s own DNA that was found in the fingernail scrapings and inside her mouth.
Finally on Wednesday, Sawyer told Flowers he planned to file a motion to recuse prosecutor Stephanie McFarland from the case. Earlier in the hearing, Sawyer said: “I do not trust Ms. McFarland or any of her work.”
McFarland was one of the prosecutors who tried Hall’s case in 2007. In ordering the new sentencing trial, the 3rd Court of Appeals last year found that McFarland and former co-counsel Bill BIshop were in violation of constitutional protections in withholding information about the punishment witness in Hall’s case. That court also found that McFarland violated a judge’s discovery order in withholding from defense lawyers incriminating statements made by a prosecution witness.
The Austin American-Statesman reported today that a judge recently tossed a conviction in a 2006 case after finding that McFarland withheld information about an expert witness.
Flowers said he would wait for Sawyer to write a written motion for recusal before ruling on the matter.
Permalink | Comments (15) | Categories: Colton Pitonyak/Laura Hall
May 11, 2010
Hall's sentencing trial delayed
Laura Ashley Hall’s new sentencing trial, set to begin Monday, has been postponed, according to prosecutor Allison Wetzel.
Hall, 26, was convicted of hindering apprehension and tampering with evidence in the 2005 West Campus murder and mutilation of 21-year-old Jennifer Cave. She had served part of a five-year sentence when an appellate court last year upheld her conviction but found that her original sentencing hearing was unfair.
Wetzel said that she learned about the delay Monday from state District Judge Wilford Flowers. She said she could not comment on the reason and referred questions to Flowers, who could not be reached.
Hall’s lawyer, Joe James Sawyer, also could not be reached Tuesday.
Prosecutors have subpoenaed dozens of witnesses to be in Flower’s 147th District Court in Travis County next week. Cave’s mother and her husband traveled to Austin last week to prepare for trial with prosecutors.
While the jury will be instructed that Hall has been found guilty and will only decide her sentence, prosecutors are expected to present most of the case they had presented against her in 2005.
She could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison. Hall also will be eligible for probation.
Colton Pitonyak was convicted of murdering Cave and sentenced to 55 years in prison. At his trial he said he was under the influence of drugs and alcohol the night she died and that he must have been to the one to have killed Cave. He said he did not mutilate the body of Cave, who was found in the bathtub of Pitonyak’s West Campus apartment with her head and hands cut off.
Prosecutors charged at Hall’s original trial that she participated in the mutilation.The University of Texas graduate was convicted of altering or destroying a human body and biological evidence.
Hall, who is awaiting trial in the Travis County Jail, has said she is innocent.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Colton Pitonyak/Laura Hall
March 12, 2010
Laura Hall's sentencing trial set for May 17
State District Judge Wilford Flowers today set Laura Ashley Hall’s new sentencing trial for May 17, prosecutor Allison Wetzel said.
Hall, 26, stands convicted of hindering apprehension and tampering with evidence in the 2005 West Campus murder and mutilation of 21-year-old Jennifer Cave. She had served about 17 months of a five-year sentence when an appellate court last year upheld her conviction but found that her original sentencing hearing was unfair.
Hall was released on bail about a year ago pending resolution of her appeals, which happened in October when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refused to consider the case.
On Feb. 8, Flowers ordered her jailed again, noting that her convictions are now final.
Hall’s friend and former lover Colton Pitonyak is serving a 55-year-sentence for Cave’s murder.
Permalink | Comments (12) | Categories: Colton Pitonyak/Laura Hall
February 19, 2010
Laura Hall's sentencing trial delayed
State District Judge Wilford Flowers today delayed Laura Ashley Hall’s new sentencing trial that had been scheduled for March 8, said prosecutor Allison Wetzel. No new date has been set.
In a hastily arranged court appearance, Hall’s defense lawyer Joe James Sawyer asked Flowers to appoint a DNA expert and to delay the trial to allow that expert to review evidence, Wetzel said. Sawyer also said he has two other major trials coming up and needs time to read the court record of Hall’s initial trial and sentencing in 2007, Wetzel said. Sawyer could not be immediately reached.
“The judge asked us to look at the week of May 17, to see if your witnesses can be available,” Wetzel said.
Hall stands convicted of hindering apprehension and tampering with evidence in the 2005 West Campus murder and mutilation of 21-year-old Jennifer Cave. She had served about 17 months of a five-year sentence when an appellate court last year upheld her conviction but found that her original sentencing hearing was unfair.
Hall was released on bail about a year ago pending resolution of her appeals, which happened in October when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refused to consider the case.
On Feb. 8, Flowers ordered her jailed again, noting that her convictions are now final.
Hall, who cried out that she was innocent during that hearing while being escorted into custody, did not say anything at today’s hearing, Wetzel said.
Hall had served about four months in jail prior to her 2007 trial.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Colton Pitonyak/Laura Hall
February 17, 2010
Looser demeanor preceded Laura Hall's outburst
When Laura Ashley Hall showed up in court last week she was chatty with reporters, told television camera operators that she was nervous and smiled as a Statesman photographer clicked her photo.
Her loose demeanor was a marked departure from how Hall, 26, acted while free on bail before her 2007 convictions for tampering with physical evidence and hindering apprehension. Prosecutors said she helped dismember the body of 21-year-old Jennifer Cave in West Campus in 2005 and drove Colton Pitonyak, who is now serving a 55-year sentence for murder in the case, to Mexico.
At right: Statesman photographs of Hall heading to and from court appearances. From top right down the photos were taken in February 2007, March 2007, August 2007 and last week.
During those previous visits to court Hall generally wore a stoic gaze and refused to speak to reporters. At one point she tried to hide her face from the press by holding a scarf over her head on her way to and from court in the Blackwell-Thurman Criminal Justice Center downtown.
When inside the courtroom, Hall sat quietly, often surrounded by family members who were obviously trying to shield her from the media attention.
In September 2007 the jury that convicted Hall sentenced her to five years in prison on the tampering with evidence charge and one year for hindering apprehension. She was sent to jail.
In February 2009, the 3rd Court of Appeals upheld the conviction but granted her a new sentencing trial. The court ruled that Travis County prosecutors unfairly withheld from the defense information that could have raised questions about the state’s only sentencing witness.
She was set free on bail to continue to fight the conviction at the Court of Criminal Appeals, which late last year upheld the 3rd Court’s ruling.
So Hall was back in court Feb. 8 for another pre-trial hearing. Word was that prosecutors were going to seek to have her bail revoked.
On her way in to court, she told the folks standing behind a row of video cameras that she was nervous, though she seemed very relaxed.
Later, while Judge Wilford Flowers took a break before Hall’s case was called, I was standing in the courtroom gallery chatting with someone when Hall approached. Her case had not yet been called and she held out her hand to this reporter and said, “Steven, right?”
I shook her hand. We had met once in early 2007 when I told her in court that I’d like to interview her and gave her my business card. My recollection is that she took it but did not say much and did not even really look at me. I have since called her home several times for comment for subsequent stories, calls that were either not returned or fielded by her father. She has never spoken to me at the courthouse.
So I was a little surprised when Hall began a conversation as if we were old friends. After our handshake, she asked if I had seen the Super Bowl the night before. I said I had.
With no interest in discussing football with Hall while Sharon Sedwick, the mother of Jennifer Cave, was within earshot, I tried to turn the conversation.
“So what have you been up to?” I asked.
Hall shrugged the question off. I asked if she was living with her parents and she said she was. Hall said she wasn’t working, just focused on her case.
I asked why her demeanor was different that day.
She said she has always been nervous in court: “Do you know how many times I have come in here and almost peed in my pants?”
Hall continued to maintain that she has been wrongly convicted.
A television reporter approached and Hall quickly turned to him, shook his hand and asked him where he went to college. He said Syracuse University. She thought he said Sarah Lawrence, a small college outside of New York City, and asked if they had old-fashioned elevators in New York with the accordion-style gates.
“I wanted to go to Sarah Lawrence (College) so bad!”
Now several people I have spoken to —including former teachers, employers and even a former tutor — have described Hall as very intelligent. But at this point in our conversation she sounded like a giddy high-school girl.
The television reporter asked Hall what her goal in court was. She said: “I’ve got to clear my name, baby.”
She said she used to be scared of reporters but came to realize that “you guys are people just like me.”
She said she still holds hope of going to law school, although her convictions would likely keep her from practicing law.
“Right now there is a football game and I’m the football but I so want to be the quarterback,” she said. “Or the coach.”
Then she said, “So Paul Devoe, what about that guy?” referring to the convicted killer accused of slaying six people in two states in 2007. Devoe is now on death row.
Soon Flowers returned to the bench and called Hall’s case. During a brief hearing he set her sentencing trial for March 8 and ordered her bail revoked. He said that because her appeals were up she no longer was entitled to an appellate bond.
When the hearing ended, a sheriff’s deputy began to escort Hall into custody. She grabbed the arm of her lawyer, Joe James Sawyer, and cried out: “Please get me out of this.”
The deputy grabbed her and Hall yelled, “Your honor, I am not guilty. You need to let me go home. You need to let me go home.”
Several minutes after the door from the courtroom to the secured holding area was closed, Hall could still be heard yelling from the courtroom.
Permalink | Comments (35) | Categories: Colton Pitonyak/Laura Hall
February 8, 2010
Laura Hall ordered back to jail
State District Judge Wilford Flowers today ordered Laura Hall jailed and said a new sentencing trial in her case would begin March 8.
Hall, 26, was convicted in 2007 of hindering apprehension and tampering with evidence in the 2005 West Campus murder and mutilation of 21-year-old Austin legal secretary Jennifer Cave. A Travis County jury sentenced her to 5 years in the tampering with evidence case and 1 year for the hindering apprehension charge, but that sentence was thrown out on appeal.
In February 2009, the 3rd Court of Appeals in Austin ruled that Travis County prosecutors unfairly withheld from the defense information that could have raised questions about the state’s only sentencing witness.
The Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, agreed with the lower court in October, setting the stage for a new punishment trial in Travis County.
Hall had been free on bond since the initial appeals court ruling. Flowers ruled today that because her conviction had been upheld, Hall was no longer entitled to bond.
When a sheriff’s deputy began to escort Hall into custody, she grabbed the arm of her lawyer, Joe James Sawyer, and yelled “Please get me out of this.” As the deputy pulled her toward the holding cell, Hall yelled, “Your honor, I am not guilty. You need to let me go home. You need to let me go home.”
Several minutes after the door from the courtroom to the secured holding area was closed, Hall could still be heard yelling from the courtroom.
Hall is a University of Texas graduate who was accused of helping fellow UT student Colton Pitonyak dismember Cave, whose body was found in Pitonyak’s bathtub with her head and hands removed. Pitonyak, serving a 55-year sentence for murder, was arrested after he and Hall fled to Mexico in Hall’s Cadillac.
Monday’s hearing was attended by Cave’s mother, Sharon Sedwick, and her husband, Jim Sedwick, both of Corpus Christi. Outside Court, Sharon Sedwick said she was relieved that Hall is back behind bars.
“I’m thrilled,” she said. “This is exactly what I wanted.”
Hall’s father, Loren Hall of Tarpley, Texas, said his daughter has been living with him and his wife. The couple operates the Caribbean Cowboy R.V. Resort. Loren Hall said his daughter has been working at the resort.
“My daughter is innocent,” he said.
A new jury will be chosen for Hall’s sentencing trail. It is expected to take several days, as prosecutors are expected to put on much of the evidence they used to convict her in 2007. The jury could sentence her to up to 10 years in prison for tampering with evidence and up to one year in jail for hindering apprehension.
Photos: Laura Hall ordered back to jail, 02.08.10
Permalink | Comments (64) | Categories: Colton Pitonyak/Laura Hall
February 2, 2010
Pitonyak files another appeal in 2005 killing
With his state appeals exhausted, lawyers for convicted killer Colton Pitonyak today asked a federal judge to hold a hearing on their allegations that it was Laura Ashley Hall and not Pitonyak who killed Jennifer Cave in 2005.
Pitonyak’s recent petition for writ of habeas corpus, filed in U.S. District Court in Austin, is similar to one that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied last month.
Pitonyak, 27, is serving 55 years for killing Cave, 21. Hall, Pitonyak’s former lover, was convicted of evidence tampering and hindering apprehension in the case. Her five-year sentence was thrown out on appeal and she is free while awaiting a new sentencing hearing.
Pitonyak’s latest appeal relies in part on sworn statements from two former Travis County Jail inmates who say Hall confessed to the murder in a group therapy session shortly after her 2005 arrest — evidence that was not raised at the trials of Pitonyak or Hall.
Prosecutors have rejected the claim, noting that Pitonyak testified during his trial that he does not recall killing Cave, whose dismembered body was found in his West Campus bathtub, but that the killer must be him.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Colton Pitonyak/Laura Hall
January 13, 2010
Pitonyak's appeal, which pinned killing on Hall, rejected
Texas’ highest criminal court today denied Colton Pitonyak’s latest appeal, one in which the convicted killer’s lawyers had claimed that it was Laura Ashley Hall and not Pitonyak who killed Jennifer Cave in 2005.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals announced the denial of Pitonyak’s application for writ of habeas corpus without a written order.
Pitonyak, 27, is serving 55 years in prison for murder in the death of Cave, an Austin legal assistant whose decapitated body was found in the bathtub of his West Campus apartment in August 2005. Pitonyak will be eligible for parole in 2033.
Hall, 26, is Pitonyak’s former lover who was convicted of evidence tampering and hindering apprehension in the case and sentenced to five years in prison. She was recently granted a new sentencing trial on appeal and is due in court Feb. 8.
Prosecutors argued at Hall’s trial that she participated in dismembering Cave’s body and drove him to Mexico after the killing.
Pitonyak’s appeal relied on sworn statements from two former Travis County Jail inmates who say that Hall confessed to the murder in a group therapy session shortly after her 2005 arrest, evidence that was not raised at the trials of Pitonyak or Hall. Those statements were recorded by a jail social worker at the time, according to court records.
Pitonyak’s lawyers, Joe Turner and Christopher Perri, wrote in his appeal that prosecutors failed to inform the defense of the women’s statements prior to Pitonyak’s trial, which they claim was a violation of his due process rights.
On Wednesday Turner said he was dismayed that the Court of Criminal Appeals ruled without anyone conducting a hearing on the case. The court’s ruling said the decision was based on findings by the trial court, which is presided over by state District Judge Wilford Flowers.
“A third party confesses to the crime and you don’t even get a hearing,” Turner said. “The jury should have heard that there was a confession and the government kept that evidence from us.”
Turner said he would file a similar application for writ of habeas corpus in federal court, likely within 30 days.
Prosecutors have roundly rejected the claim that Hall killed Cave. And the claim was contradicted by Pitonyak’s testimony at his January 2007 trial. At the time, he said he could not remember much of the night that Cave died because he was drinking heavily and using drugs but that he most likely was the one who shot her.
He said he went out on Sixth Street with Cave, who he described as a friend, on Aug. 16, 2005, and awoke in his apartment the next morning to find Cave’s body in his bathtub. Pitonyak testified that he then called Hall and that Hall was the one who mutilated Cave’s body.
Another witness testified that Hall spent the night of Cave’s death at the witness’ South Austin apartment.
American-Statesman photo during Pitonyak’s trial in 2007.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Colton Pitonyak/Laura Hall
June 11, 2009
Laura Hall asks for new review of convictions
Laura Ashley Hall, convicted of tampering with evidence and hindering apprehension in the 2005 West Campus murder and mutilation of Jennifer Cave, has asked the state’s highest criminal court to grant her a new trial.
Hall’s lawyer filed a petition for discretionary review with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals last week, according to court records.
In February, the 3rd Court of Appeals, an intermediate appellate court, upheld Hall’s conviction but threw out her five-year sentence for tampering with evidence. Under the decision, Hall would get a new sentencing hearing.
In her latest appeals she is also asking for a new trial on whether she is guilty. Hall was freed from jail on bail after the February ruling. At the time she went to live with her parents in the Hill Country town of Tarpley.
Cave’s body was found in the bathtub of Colton Pitonyak’s apartment in the Orange Tree Condominiums on Rio Grande Street in August 2005, her head and hands removed and stab wounds to her torso. A bullet was fired into Cave’s head after it was removed removed from her body, a medical examiner testified.
Pitonyak is serving 55 years for murder in the case.
At Hall’s trial in 2007, prosecutors accused her of helping Pitonyak cut up Cave’s body to cover the crime. The two then drove to Mexico together.
According to the 3rd Court, Hall deserves a new sentencing trial because prosecutors suppressed evidence related to the punishment testimony of cab driver Douglas Conley, the only witness prosecutors called to the stand during the trial’s punishment phase.
Conley testified that Hall, while riding in his cab, referred to Cave in a derogatory way and acted “just cold, callous” toward the dead woman.
After the trial, Conley contacted Hall’s lawyer and revealed that he was unable to identify Hall in a photo lineup with Austin police.
Conley also said he told the Travis County District Attorney’s Office about the lineup. In response, he said, prosecutors showed him a single photo to confirm Hall’s identity and told him “not to worry about it,” according to the 3rd Court’s ruling.
Mahaffey has also argued that prosecutors violated the trial judge’s discovery order by not disclosing to the defense prior to trial that witness Nora Sullivan accused Hall of making self-incriminating statements about the case and that prosecutors did not give the defense proper notice of another witness’s criminal history.
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May 1, 2009
Hall denied in latest bid at new trial
The Texas 3rd Court of Appeals on Friday denied Laura Hall’s bid to have the court reconsider her request for a new trial on charges of tampering with evidence and hindering apprehension related to the 2005 West Campus murder of Jennifer Cave.
In February, the court upheld Hall’s conviction but threw out the five-year sentence for tampering with evidence. Hall is expected to get a new sentencing hearing, though no date has been set.
At her trial in 2007, prosecutors accused hall of helping Colton Pitonyak cut up Cave’s body to cover the crime. The two then drove to Mexico together.
Pitonyak is serving 55 years in prison.
According to the 3rd Court, Hall deserves a new sentencing trial because prosecutors suppressed evidence related to the punishment testimony of cab driver Douglas Conley, the only witness prosecutors called to the stand during the trial’s punishment phase.
Conley testified that Hall, while riding in his cab, referred to Cave in a derogatory way and acted “just cold, callous” toward the dead woman.
After the trial, Conley contacted Hall’s lawyer and revealed that he was unable to identify Hall in a photo lineup with Austin police.
Conley also said he told the Travis County District Attorney’s Office about the lineup. In response, he said, prosecutors showed him a single photo to confirm Hall’s identity and told him “not to worry about it,” according to the 3rd Court’s ruling.
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February 11, 2009
Laura Hall denied parole in mutilation case
State parole officials today denied the latest bid for freedom by Laura Ashley Hall, the Austin woman serving a five-year sentence for tampering with evidence in the grisly 2005 West Campus murder of 21-year-old Austin legal assistant Jennifer Cave.
Hall, at right, was accused at her 2007 trial of helping Colton Pitonyak, who is serving 55 years for Cave’s murder, cover the crime by cutting up Cave’s body.
With it’s denial of parole, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles ordered Hall to serve her entire sentence, said Jason Clark, a spokesman with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
But Clark said that parole officials must review her case again in December when Hall’s good-time credit plus time served equals the length of her sentence, Clark said.
If denied, Hall, 25, will be considered for release every year until Sept. 2, 2012, the day her five-year sentence expires.
Because her case is under appeal, Hall is serving her time in the Travis County Jail. A decision on that appeal could come at any time from the 3rd Court of Appeals in Austin, which in September heard oral arguments in her case.
At the oral arguments, an appeals court judge said errors were made at Hall’s trial but was not specific about the errors or whether they were serious enough to warrant a new trial.
Cave was found dismembered in the bathtub of Pitonyak’s apartment near the University of Texas. Prosecutors argued that Hall, Pitonyak’s former girlfriend, went to the apartment after the killing and helped mutilate the body and then drove Pitonyak to Mexico to escape prosecution.
Hall has already completed a 180-day sentence for hindering apprehension, for which she was also convicted.
Hall’s lawyer, Ken Mahaffey, argued in his appeal that prosecutors withheld information from the defense during the trial and that the jury received improper jury instructions. Finally, he said that prosecutors were improperly allowed to take two different positions: arguing in Pitonyak’s trial that Hall was not involved in the crime and then arguing in Hall’s trial that she led the cutting up of the body as part of an aborted cover-up.
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September 24, 2008
Appeals judge: Errors were made in Laura Hall's trial
An appeals court judge said today that legal mistakes were made during the trial of Laura Ashley Hall, who is serving a five-year sentence for tampering with evidence in the 2005 West Campus murder of 21-year-old Jennifer Cave.
Justice David Puryear made the statement during oral arguments in Hall’s appeal of her September 2007 convictions in Travis County. A jury also found Hall guilty of misdemeanor hindering apprehension, for which she was sentenced to 180 days. Puryear said he and two other judges comprising a panel of the 3rd Court of Appeals must decide whether the mistakes affected Hall’s convictions or sentences.
“You are going to have to be in position of conceding error in this case,” Puryear told Assistant Travis County District Attorney Bryan Case. “Error is there and the question becomes how much and the materiality of these.”
Puryear did not specify the errors or who made them, although a direct appeal is generally a review of the trial court’s decisions in the case. State District Judge Wilford Flowers presided over Hall’s trial as well as that of Pitonyak, who was convicted of murdering Cave and was sentenced to 55 years in prison.
Cave was found dismembered in Pitonyak’s West Campus apartment. Prosecutors argued that Hall, Pitonyak’s former girlfriend, went to the apartment after the killing and helped mutilate her body.
Hall’s lawyer, Ken Mahaffey, argued today that prosecutors were improperly allowed to take two different positions of the case — arguing in Pitonyak’s trial that Hall, at right, was not involved in the crime and then arguing in Hall’s trial that it was she who led the body cutting as part of an aborted cover-up of the crime.
It was during a discussion between Case and Justice Alan Waldrop about the sentencing testimony of Doug Conley, a former Austin cab driver, that Puryear made his remarks about error.
Conley testified during the sentencing phase of the trial that when he gave Hall a ride about a year after the killing, Hall made a disparaging remark about Cave.
After the trial, defense lawyers learned that Conley had been unable to pick Hall out of a lineup after reporting the comments to police. This information, Mahaffey argued, should have been disclosed to Hall’s defense under a law that requires disclosure of such favorable evidence.
After Puryear alluded to error, Case turned his argument to allegations that incriminating testimony of Nora Sullivan, one of Pitonyak’s friends, was sprung on the defense during trial and not disclosed before the trial according to Flowers’ order.
Sullivan testified that Hall told her in the months after the killing that Pitonyak had procrastinated about cutting up Cave’s body. Hall didn’t say she helped dismember Cave’s body, but “that was the impression I was given,” Sullivan testified.
During the trial, prosecutors said they learned about Sullivan’s testimony late in the investigation and Flowers ruled they did not willfully violate his order.
Flowers also found that prosecutors did not willfully withhold the criminal history of another witness — Henriette Langenbach, a former cellmate of Hall’s who testified that Hall bragged about cutting up a body.
Mahaffey argued that Hall’s trial lawyers could have better sought to discredit Langenbach had they known before trial, as is required by law, that Langenbach had once gone to prison in New Zealand related to kidnapping charges.
Mahaffey also argued that Flowers should have included in his charge to the jury the definition of murder and should have given the jury the chance to consider a lesser included charge of failure to report human remains.
The errors, Mahaffey argued, “just build up.”
“This is about the integrity of the judicial process.”
Outside court, Hall’s parents said their daughter is not doing well in the Travis County Jail, where she has “dental problems.” Hall, like Pitonyak, was a University of Texas student when Cave was murdered. Hall has since completed her degree.
Sharon Cave, Jennifer Cave’s mother, who attended the hearing with her fiancé, Jim Sedwick, said outside court that she has no sympathy for Laura Hall.
Cave praised the police, prosecutors and Flowers for their attention to the case and said she is fearful for the day Hall is released from jail.
“Laura is obviously mentally imbalanced,” she said. “Do I have fear for our children, for us? Yes, I do.”
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September 23, 2008
Cab driver in Laura Hall case fighting for her freedom
After Laura Hall, 25, was convicted last year of tampering with evidence in the murder of Jennifer Cave and misdemeanor hindering apprehension — for helping killer Colton Pitonyak flee to Mexico — Doug Conley testified for the prosecution during the sentencing phase.
Conley told the jury that about a year after Cave’s 2005 death, while he was working as an Austin cab driver, he gave Hall a ride. During that ride, Conley testified, Hall referred to Cave by a derogatory name.
The jury sentenced Hall to five years in prison. But immediately after the case, Conley joined forces with Hall’s lawyers and gave an affidavit used in Hall’s motion for a new trial. Conley said in the affidavit that he had been unable to pick Hall out of a lineup, information favorable to Hall’s defense that her lawyers argued prosecutors should have told them about. That motion was rejected.
Now, Conley has given his input on Hall’s case to the 3rd Court of Appeals in Austin, which tomorrow will consider Hall’s appeal in the case.
Conley wrote in a 16-page amicus curiae, or friend of the court brief, that his “interest is the promotion and preservation of a strong, fair and honest criminal justice system.”
Most of the brief attacks Hall’s indictment for felony hindering apprehension, for which she was acquitted. (She was convicted of misdemeanor hindering apprehension.) Conley argues that Travis County assistant district attorneys committed misconduct by securing the indictment.
The indictment charged that Hall knew that Pitonyak had been charged with murder when she drove him to Mexico after the August 2005 killing and dismembering of Cave. But according to testimony of the lead detective and court documents, Pitonyak was not charged until after the pair reached the border town of Piedras Negras.
Conley, who according to his brief now lives in Prescott, Ariz., noted these facts “to align the pertinent facts from the record to assist the court in considering this matter.”
Assistant Travis County District Attorney Bryan Case rejected Conley’s assertion that prosecutors did anything wrong. Their theory of the case was that Hall committed a “continuing offense” that did not end until after Pitonyak had been officially charged, Case said.
Hall’s appeal argues for a new trial. Her lawyer, Kenneth Mahaffey, wrote in a filing that her conviction was tainted by seven errors, including the state’s failure to disclose to the defense that Conley could not pick Hall out of a lineup.
Mahaffey also argues in his brief that the state violated her rights by arguing at Pitonyak’s trial that it was Pitonyak who mutilated Cave’s body and then argued at Hall’s trial that it was Hall who was the mastermind behind the mutilation.
The entire state response to Hall’s brief can be found here. Oral arguments are scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Wednesday at the Price Daniel Sr. Building on W. 14th Street.
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