A San Francisco woman’s murder and attempted murder convictions for asphyxiating her young daughter and trying to kill her son during a suicide attempt in 2006 were upheld by a state appeals court today.
A San Francisco woman’s murder and attempted murder convictions for asphyxiating her young daughter and trying to kill her son during a suicide attempt in 2006 were upheld by a state appeals court today.
Linda Woo, 45, tried to suffocate her 3-year-old daughter, her 4-year-old son and herself with carbon monoxide poisoning from coals she had lit in a portable barbecue inside a car in the garage of her Ingleside Terrace home on March 29, 2006.
A family friend found them after being alerted that Woo had failed to show up for her nursery school job. The daughter, Olive Woo Murphy, died, but Woo and her son survived.
Prosecution and defense psychological experts agreed Woo suffered from major depressive disorder in the wake of the breakup of a six-year extramarital affair. Woo, who worked as a rate analyst at PG&E, and her husband separated in 2005.
Woo wrote in a suicide note that she intended to kill her children because she wanted to spare them “the pain of losing me and then struggling to lead a normal life knowing their mother killed herself and left them.”
Her defense attorneys unsuccessfully argued at her 2009 trial in San Francisco Superior Court that she should be found not guilty by reason of insanity because she was unable to distinguish moral right from wrong.
After convicting Woo in April 2009 of first-degree murder and attempted murder with premeditation, the trial jury rejected the insanity claim during a second phase of trial in May 2009.
Judge Cynthia Lee sentenced her to 25 years to life in prison.
In today’s ruling, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeal in San Francisco turned down Woo’s appeal argument that there were errors in the jury instructions on the definition of insanity.
Justice Peter Siggins wrote for the court, “This instruction gave Woo’s motive all the weight it deserved, and all the room she needed to argue that she was insane because she truly believed that she was protecting her children by killing them.”
Dennis Riordan, Woo’s lawyer in the appeal, said he will appeal further either by asking the Court of Appeal to rehear the case, or by asking the California Supreme Court to review it.
Julia Cheever, Bay City News
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