Lawyer for Placerville grandmother calls husband’s killing an accident
By Peter Hecht, Sacramento Bee
The murder defense of Placerville grandmother Colleen Harris came down today to a drop of blood and a terrible accident.
“I’d like to talk to you about a drop of blood,” defense lawyer David Weiner began as laid out his closing argument that Colleen, 73, is not guilty of the brutal shotgun slaying of her husband, Robert Edward “Bob” Harris, 72, in their rustic home on Wilderness Court.
That drop of blood was found on the hand of Bob Harris in a gruesome crime scene in which the retired U.S. Forest Service supervisor was found dead in his marital bed Jan. 5, 2013 from a shotgun blast that violently exploded out his face.
Arguing that his client didn’t kill her husband, Weiner said the blood on Bob Harris’ hand underscored the defense’s argument that Bob was holding the shotgun and that blood spattered on his hand as it went off.
The prosecution has argued that Colleen Harris, a Placerville land surveyor known to extended family as “Grandma Cokie,” killed her husband in an act of premediated murder because she believed he had just made a phone call to his extramarital lover.