DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — A DeKalb County man convicted three times in his wife's murder will, at last, serve a life prison sentence, Georgia's Supreme Court ruled.
After appearing three times before the state's highest court, justices chose to uphold the latest murder conviction and sentence for Dennis Allaben.
Attorneys for Allaben appealed his third conviction, which a jury returned in December 2016, claiming there wasn't sufficient evidence to support their verdict, the court's opinion reads. Allaben's defense said the State also failed "to prove venue," adding prosecutors didn't prove where the alleged crime happened.
Allaben has been convicted three times of killing his wife Maureen. Prosecutors have maintained Allaben choked his wife to death and drove their two young children to Virginia with her body in the bed of his truck in January 2010.
In his first trial, he was convicted of malice murder and reckless conduct in 2011 -- which the Georgia Supreme Court threw out claiming the verdicts were mutually exclusive and, in turn, illegal. The court's decision triggered a second trial.
In August 2014, another DeKalb County jury heard the case and found him guilty of malice murder. His conviction was overturned by the high court and ordered to be retried on the basis that the judge disallowed a witness to fully testify on Allaben's behalf.
After the third trial in 2016, attorneys said Allaben essentially admitted to killing his wife in statements to his sister-in-law in Virginia when he said he was "going to tie her up and use a cloth with ether on it to put her to sleep," and instead said that the cloth went down her throat and that he had killed her, the court's opinion reads. Court records show he also told his children that "he strangled her."
This time, the Georgia Supreme Court is upholding the conviction saying the keyword is malice.
Citing Georgia law, the court said a person commits the crime of malice murder with "malice aforethought, either express or implied, causes the death of another human being." In its opinion, the court said the jury was authorized to discredit Allaben's assertion that his wife's death was an accident based on other testimony and evidence provided. Maureen's formal cause of death was strangulation, a chokehold that long enough to kill her, a medical examiner determined.
As for the second part of Allaben's appeal, the court said though no questions or testimony were asked about where the crime happened, the fact that it was tried in DeKalb County was proof enough in the eyes of the state's legal team, the opinion reads, citing several state laws. Prosecutors also determined that Allaben and his wife were together in their DeKalb County home before her death happened.
Allaben will now serve a life sentence, as determined by his latest conviction.
