DECATUR, Ga.,None — Testimony began Monday in the murder trial of a former DeKalb County sheriff's deputy accused of killing his wife and a day laborer two years ago.
Channel 2 Action News reporter Richard Elliot spent the day in the courthouse covering the trial.
Derrick Yancey is accused of shooting his wife, Linda Yancey, also a DeKalb County sheriff's deputy, to death along with Marcial Cax-Puluc, a day laborer hired that morning.
Prosecutors told jurors that Yancey killed his wife then Cax-Puluc. Following the deaths, they said he made up a story about Cax-Puluc, a Guatemalan immigrant, shooting Linda Yancey during a robbery attempt. Derrick Yancey told police he shot Cax-Puluc in self-defense.
But prosecutors said that story had holes from the beginning of the investigation. They want the jury to find Yancey guilty of two killings.
"You'll be asked to send a message that this type of violence is not tolerated in DeKalb County," prosecutor Kenneth Hutcherson told jurors during opening remarks. "And that Derrick Yancey and no one else is above the law."
Yancey's attorneys told a different story. Ruth McMullen told jurors that Cax-Puluc is the real villain and tried to rob the Yanceys to pay back $6,000 he owed to the people who smuggled him into the U.S. just a month before he was killed. She also claimed DeKalb police were under a lot of pressure to solve this case and immediately developed a bad attitude toward Yancey.
"What we're asking you to do for the next few weeks is keep an open mind and not rush to judgment," McMullen told jurors.
The first Dekalb County police officer on the scene that day testified that Yancey seemed unusually calm minutes after the deaths.
"A lot calmer than I would've been after a gunfight," said Officer Richard Thompson.
The trial was delayed last year when Yancey cut off his ankle monitor and fled to Belize in Central America. Prosecutors plan to use that and the Yancey's rocky personal history as part of their case.
The trial will resume Tuesday morning.