Jennifer Dalton broke down in tears on the witness stand today when the prosecutor played the 911 tape she called into police after she shot and killed her husband two years ago.
"My husband came by my house," she shrieked to the Elk Grove Police Department dispatcher. "I shot him."
Dalton said in the call that she and her husband, Craig Dalton, had been fighting and that he came over and had said something to her about having sex with other women.
"He had no right coming by here," she said in the 911 call.
Sacramento Superior Court Judge Helena R. Gweon recessed the trial 20 minutes early when Dalton, 42, sobbed into a handkerchief.
She testified Wednesday that she shot her husband after he had slammed her into a wall, called her a whore and demanded sex. Her lawyer, LInda Parisi, has characterized the shooting as a case of self defense. Parisi is planning on calling an expert on battered women's syndrome to testify later in the trial.
Dalton was acquitted earlier this year of first-degree murder charges with the special circumstance allegation of lying in wait in the July 13, 2009, shooting death of Craig Dalton, 39, in the garage of the defendant's home in the 9300 block of Rainbow Falls Way.
The panel in the first trial did not reach a verdict on the lesser-included offense of second-degree murder. Dalton is now being retried on that charge.
Deputy District Attorney Chris Ore focused earlier in the day on several phone messages Jennifer Dalton left her husband and emails she also sent him the morning of the shooting.
Dalton testified she could not remember the details of any of the voicemail messages other than that "we were having an argument."
The woman had recently quit her job and feared that the bank was about to foreclose on her home. She had expressed anger toward her husband in one email for what she characterized as his lack of financial support.
"You are the biggest let down of my life," she wrote.
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