2008 Woodie Awards
New Stagg Trial Begins
Issue date: 3/1/07 Section: News
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OLATHE, Kan. (AP) - A music professor who knew that his lover once tried to kill himself strangled the younger man and tried to disguise it as a suicide, a prosecutor said as the professor's second trial opened Tuesday.
But a defense lawyer countered that there was no physical evidence tying David Lee Stagg to the April 2004 death of William J. Jennings and said an unknown third person must have committed the crime.
Stagg, 59, who teaches at Central Missouri State University in Warrensburg, is charged in Johnson County District Court with first-degree murder.
His first trial last fall ended with jurors unable to reach a verdict after 11 hours of deliberation over two days.
Jennings, who owned a court reporting service, was 51 years old when he was found dead in the living room of his Shawnee home, his neck wedged in the base of a decorative wrought-iron bird cage.
In Tuesday's opening statements, Assistant District Attorney Lannie Ornburn said the two men quarreled the evening of April 24, 2004, after having dinner and watching a movie at Jennings' home.
Ornburn said Jennings was upset about their relationship, feeling that Stagg spent too little time with him.
The argument that night turned physical, he said, so much so that the assailant knocked the veneer off Jennings' front teeth.
"Mr. Jennings was in a heck of a fight," Ornburn said.
Knowing that Jennings had attempted suicide the previous fall, Stagg wrote a fake suicide note on Jennings' laptop computer, Ornburn said. Crime lab experts concluded that the note was not saved in the same way Jennings saved other files on the computer, Ornburn said.
Defense attorney Tom Bath acknowledged that Stagg and Jennings had quarreled.
But he said Stagg left and went to a condo that he co-owns on the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Mo.
Bath said DNA found under Jennings' fingernails and on a stain on the computer desk tended to clear Stagg.
He also said a fingerprint on a glass in the kitchen came from someone other than Stagg or Jennings - someone else who was in the house after Stagg left.
Stagg cooperated with police, Bath said, allowing them to examine his car, his clothes and his condo.
But a defense lawyer countered that there was no physical evidence tying David Lee Stagg to the April 2004 death of William J. Jennings and said an unknown third person must have committed the crime.
Stagg, 59, who teaches at Central Missouri State University in Warrensburg, is charged in Johnson County District Court with first-degree murder.
His first trial last fall ended with jurors unable to reach a verdict after 11 hours of deliberation over two days.
Jennings, who owned a court reporting service, was 51 years old when he was found dead in the living room of his Shawnee home, his neck wedged in the base of a decorative wrought-iron bird cage.
In Tuesday's opening statements, Assistant District Attorney Lannie Ornburn said the two men quarreled the evening of April 24, 2004, after having dinner and watching a movie at Jennings' home.
Ornburn said Jennings was upset about their relationship, feeling that Stagg spent too little time with him.
The argument that night turned physical, he said, so much so that the assailant knocked the veneer off Jennings' front teeth.
"Mr. Jennings was in a heck of a fight," Ornburn said.
Knowing that Jennings had attempted suicide the previous fall, Stagg wrote a fake suicide note on Jennings' laptop computer, Ornburn said. Crime lab experts concluded that the note was not saved in the same way Jennings saved other files on the computer, Ornburn said.
Defense attorney Tom Bath acknowledged that Stagg and Jennings had quarreled.
But he said Stagg left and went to a condo that he co-owns on the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Mo.
Bath said DNA found under Jennings' fingernails and on a stain on the computer desk tended to clear Stagg.
He also said a fingerprint on a glass in the kitchen came from someone other than Stagg or Jennings - someone else who was in the house after Stagg left.
Stagg cooperated with police, Bath said, allowing them to examine his car, his clothes and his condo.
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