NORTHAMPTON — Following jury selection that took more than a week, opening arguments in the third murder trial of a former Granby woman accused in her wife’s 2010 killing are expected to begin Wednesday morning.
The final three jurors were impaneled Tuesday.
Cara Rintala, who has maintained her innocence throughout, already has been tried twice in Hampshire Superior Court. Both resulted in mistrials, in 2013 and 2014.
The Supreme Judicial Court in January cleared the way for a third trial, writing in a two-page opinion that “the evidence against Rintala was sufficient to permit the jury to conclude that she strangled the victim in the basement of their house.”
In March 2010, Annamarie Cochrane Rintala was found strangled to death at the bottom of the basement stairs — her face and neck badly bruised and body covered with paint — in the Granby home she shared with Cara Rintala.
The trial is expected to last between four and five weeks. In July, the prosecution, First Assistant Northwestern District Attorney Stephen Gagne and Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Suhl, asked Judge Mary-Lou Rup to consider instructing jurors on the manslaughter charge. In the last two trials, jurors were only permitted to consider whether Rintala was guilty of first-degree murder.
Rup’s decision will not be known until she instructs jurors after the evidence has been presented during the trial.
Rintala’s attorney, David Hoose, of Northampton, made the same request during the first trial in 2013.
A first-degree murder conviction would mean the jury found Rintala guilty of killing her wife with premeditation. A manslaughter conviction would mean a jury found there was no premeditation.
Michael Majchrowicz can be reached at mmajchrowicz@gazettenet.com. Follow him @mjmajchrowicz throughout the trial.