Daniel Greco of Little Elm was found guilty of capital murder on Wednesday in Denton County 431st District Court.
With the verdict comes the possibility that Greco, who was convicted of strangling Anjanette Harris, which also resulted in the death of their unborn child in March 2016, could be sentenced to death when the punishment phase begins Friday.
Greco’s defense attorneys tried to frame Harris’ killing as bondage sex gone wrong. They tried to convince the jurors that Greco did not intend on killing Harris, but rather acted negligently, when he admittingly bound Harris’ arms and legs, wrapped duct tape around her face and head, and pulled, “as tight as he could,” a rubber strap that he tied around her neck.
The defense attorneys at the last minute offered the jurors additional charges to consider along with capital murder. Before they began deliberating at about 10:45 a.m., the jurors were instructed to consider capital murder, murder, manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. The capital murder verdict came in just after 2 p.m.
In their closing arguments, prosecutors Lindsey Sheguit and Michael Graves kept jurors focused on the fact that Greco killed two people when he strangled Harris. And now they will move on to push for Greco to get the death penalty, a sentence the Denton County District Attorney’s Office has not sought in nearly a decade.
On Tuesday, jurors saw a confession tape in which Greco told Texas Ranger Clair Barnes that he used the rubber belt to strangle Harris and that he knew she was pregnant. He said he knew Harris was dead after he strangled her but denied stabbing her. He admitted to dumping her body in the wooded area in Little Elm where she was found, bloodied and naked.
Medical examiners ruled Harris’ death was caused by ligature strangulation and that Harris was stabbed around her neck. They said Harris’ death caused the unborn child’s death. They ruled Harris was dragged to where her body was discovered on March 6 after she was killed.
Arguing for a manslaughter or negligent homicide verdict, Greco’s defense attorneys said throughout the trial that Harris’ drinking and cigarette smoking could have killed Harris’ unborn child before Greco killed her. No evidence presented to the jury suggested that was what occurred.
“You have some concerns about what’s going on with a woman who maybe doesn’t want to be pregnant,” defense attorney Caroline Simone told the jury.
Sheguit gave her closing argument first, speaking with anticipation for Simone’s line of argument about Harris.
“Those lifestyle risks did not cause that baby’s death,” Sheguit told jurors. “The lifestyle risk that caused her death was [Harris] trusting that man.”
From the beginning of the trial, defense attorneys insisted that because Greco confessed to the killing and told investigators where some evidence was located that he was “cooperative” and therefore obviously not guilty of capital murder but something less severe.
“If Dan shuts up, they’ve got nothing on him,” defense attorney Derek Adame said during closing arguments. “You don’t punish a man for cooperating.”
Graves, the prosecutor who kicked off the trial last week by delivering the state’s opening remarks, slammed this phase of the trial shut by rebuking Adame’s claim.
“We don’t put Dan on a pedestal because he was helpful during the investigation,” Graves said, adding later, “This isn’t sex gone bad. This is capital murder.”
The defense floated the idea that Harris was stabbed by somebody else after Greco dumped her body. Because of that, the setting where Harris was discovered played an outsized role in the trial. Called Hilltown, the area of Little Elm is described as a maze of unmarked and unpaved roads and is frequented by transient people. Adame and Simone argued that any number of people could have stabbed Harris.
Prosecutors were unable to find any evidence that proved Greco ever stabbed Harris. None of the knives and sharp objects found in his home showed positive test results for blood. They were, however, able to prove through witnesses the drag marks on Harris’ body came after she was dead — evidence, Graves said, that she was stabbed before her body was taken from Greco’s home.
But that ultimately did not prove to be a decisive issue in the trial given the Tarrant County medical examiner’s ruling that the strangulation is what killed Harris.
Greco will return to court at 9 a.m. Friday to begin the punishment phase of the trial.
Source: dentonrc.com, Dalton LaFerney, September 18, 2019
After Ranger testifies, end in sight for Little Elm capital murder trial
Jurors in the capital murder trial against Daniel Greco are expected to begin their deliberations Wednesday after both prosecutors and defense attorneys stopped calling witnesses and admitting evidence Tuesday afternoon.
The day ended with Judge Jonathan Bailey storming out of the 431st District Court, saying he was “ticked” after Greco’s defense attorneys submitted several requests that essentially asks for jurors to be given alternative charges to consider if they do not find him guilty of capital murder.
Most of the day was made up of testimony from the state’s final witness, Texas Ranger Clair Barnes, who walked into the courtroom and set his white felt cowboy hat on the witness stand and looked on as Assistant District Attorney Michael Graves played the video in which Barnes got Greco to confess that he “strangled” Anjanette Harris on purpose.
“Something just came over my brain,” Greco told Barnes on March 7, 2016. “I just wanted to strangle her.”
Greco told the Ranger he was high on a cocktail of cocaine, the antidepressant Klonopin and alcohol when on March 6 he “snapped” and decided to put a rubber strap around Harris’ neck while they were on his bed inside his home.
“I put it around her neck and pulled it tight,” Greco told Barnes. “I remember looking back in the mirror at myself. I remember looking at her. I let go. And then I was like, ‘Holy s--t!’ At that point, I realized what happened.”
While that evidence was likely the most damning presented in the entire trial, Greco’s defense attorneys did what they could to keep the door open to the possibility that Greco could be guilty of a lesser charge and not capital murder.
During cross examination, defense attorney Derek Adame asked Barnes if Greco ever confessed to wanting to “kill” Harris or “murder” Harris. Barnes said, as the video in court showed, that Greco only ever said during his interview he wanted to “strangle” Harris. There were other questions as to Greco’s confessed level of intoxication the night he killed Harris.
By the end of the day, Adame and the defense team suggested to Bailey that the jurors be given alternative charges to consider during deliberation. Caroline Simone, one of the defense attorneys, declined to say after court Tuesday what those suggested alternatives are, but they were significant enough that Bailey became obviously perturbed when he read them.
After reviewing the suggested changes, Bailey told the attorneys he was too “ticked” to make a ruling on the requested changes before leaving the courtroom. The jurors by then had already been dismissed for the day.
“These are changes you’ve had the opportunity to suggest for weeks,” Bailey told the defense attorneys, adding that everybody needed to be back in court at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, the earliest start so far in the trial.
Among the defense’s arguments against capital murder — the state has to prove Greco knowingly or willingly killed both the unborn child and Harris at the same time — is that Greco didn’t know Harris was pregnant the night he killed her, despite evidence showing Greco did know Harris was pregnant weeks prior to March 6.
They also argue that Harris’ own drinking “could” have killed the fetus before Greco killed Harris. No evidence presented in court shows any assertion from the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office that alcohol killed the fetus.
Before Tuesday morning, jurors had only heard Greco say “not guilty” last week. By the time they broke for lunch, they had watched the confession tape and heard Greco confess to not only strangling Harris but also loading her into the back of his pickup, driving to a wooded area, taking her body out and dragging her down a trail.
“I just drove until I found a dark spot,” Greco told Barnes. “I opened my tailgate, I grabbed her by her feet, and I dragged her through some path. And that was it.”
He even told Barnes he planned to destroy the evidence — including the rubber strap, duct tape, shoes, a bloodied sheet and quilt — but investigators and police officers arrived at his house about 12 hours after Harris was discovered and began questioning him.
He does, however, deny ever stabbing Harris in the neck. Medical examiners and investigators observed obvious stab wounds to Harris’ neck but no evidence of a weapon has been shown to the jury.
In the video, Greco is sitting inside an interview room at the Denton County Sheriff’s Office, wearing his own clothes but with the jail-issued sandals and in shackles. He was at the beginning stage of a process that could end with his own death.
Greco declined to testify Tuesday. If jurors find him guilty of capital murder this week, Greco could be sentenced to the death penalty.
Source: dentonrc.com, Dalton LaFerney, September 17, 2019
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
