Hernandez guilty of voluntary manslaughter
MUNCIE – A jury deliberated for more than seven hours Thursday before finding Juan Hernandez guilty of voluntary manslaughter – but not guilty of murder – in a 2015 fatal stabbing.
Hernandez, 48, remained composed as Delaware Circuit Court 5 Judge Thomas Cannon Jr. read the verdicts about 11:50 p.m.
The voluntary manslaughter conviction – reflecting jurors did not believe the slaying was premeditated – carries a maximum 30-year prison term. Judge Cannon set sentencing for March 15.
Hernandez was accused of killing 55-year-old Mark Hittson – the husband of the woman the defendant told jurors he had loved “with all my heart” – on Jan. 13, 2015.
Testimony at this week’s trial reflected the victim was stabbed 23 times, with 11 of the wounds in his back.
The jury – which began deliberations at 4:17 p.m. – announced it had reached verdicts about 11:30 p.m.
The jury also found Hernandez guilty of battery with a deadly weapon, a Level 5 felony carrying up to six years in prison. That charge stemmed from hand cuts that Teresa Hittson – the victim’s wife and the defendant’s ex-girlfriend – suffered as she tried to defend her husband.
In his closing arguments to jurors Thursday afternoon, Chief Deputy Prosecutor Eric Hoffman said Hernandez had “viciously slaughtered” Hittson when he “butchered a man in broad daylight.”
“This was man to man,” Hoffman said. “The defendant was not going to let Mark Hittson take his woman away from him.”
Hoffman asked jurors to consider “how long that took” for Hernandez to stab the victim nearly two dozen times in the parking lot of the Daleville trucking terminal where the defendant worked.
When Hoffman got down on one knee to simulate the killing, the victim’s widow began to weep and left the courtroom. She returned a short time later.
Not long after that, public defenders Brandon Murphy and Sam Beasley staged their own re-creation of the killing.
It suggested their client – who testified Wednesday he had blacked out and couldn’t recall stabbing Hittson – had inflicted the wounds in the victim’s back as the men struggled, before Hittson “hit the ground,” Murphy said.
Hernandez told the jury that Hittson attacked him after threatening to kill him, and that Teresa Hittson had repeatedly told him her husband was carrying a handgun. No gun was found after the slaying.
Murphy maintained his client “believed that day that Mark Hittson would kill him.”
He also suggested several of Hittson’s stab wounds were inflicted after he had died “within 60 to 90 seconds” after suffering the fatal wounds in his back.
The defense attorney said jurors should give his client’s account of his dealings with the Hittsons more weight than that provided by the victim’s widow, who Murphy suggested was “just trying to save her own reputation.”
“You can’t put (Hernandez’s) life in jeopardy on Teresa Hittson’s word,” he said.
Deputy Prosecutor Doug Mawhorr responded by calling Murphy’s theory of the slaying “speculation at best.”
“This is not a hunting knife,” Mawhorr said as he held up Hernandez’s weapon, with its double-edged 6-inch blade. “This is almost a bayonet.”
Judge Cannon would not allow the defense to present testimony about Mark Hittson’s 2008 conviction for criminal recklessness – stemming from shots fired during a 2004 standoff with police – or a domestic battery charge that was pending against him when he died.
Document: Slaying victim stabbed 23 times
The judge said Thursday he could not allow efforts “to put the victim in the case on trial.”
A sheriff’s deputy, however, was called to the stand by the defense and said he believed Hittson “could be violent.” He did not elaborate.
In 1998, Hernandez was found not guilty of attempted murder in a June 1997 stabbing outside a Muncie strip club. The Muncie man, then 30, testified his alleged victim had attacked him with a beer bottle.
In 2005, Hernandez drew an 18-month prison term after he was convicted of two counts of criminal recklessness. In that case, he had been accused of firing gunshots at a rural Delaware County home, and then at the vehicle of two men who were chasing him.
Contact news reporter Douglas Walker at (765) 213-5851. You can also follow him on Twitter @DouglasWalkerSP.