New trial ordered for Houston man in prison for wife's death
HOUSTON, TX - Texas' highest criminal court says a Houston-area man serving life in prison for the 1999 slaying of his pregnant wife was wrongly convicted and deserves a new trial.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled Wednesday in the case of David Mark Temple.
Harris County prosecutors accused Temple of staging a burglary at the couple's Houston-area home and killing his wife, Belinda, because he was having an affair. Temple later married the woman he'd been seeing.
Temple's lawyers appealed the verdict from his 2007 trial and the appeals court agreed with a state district judge who reviewed the case and cited repeated misconduct by the Harris County trial prosecutor. The appeals court said the prosecutor improperly withheld evidence from Temple's attorneys and failed to timely disclose other evidence.