NORTHAMPTON — A Hampshire Superior Court judge has denied a defense attorney’s motion to reduce a first-degree murder verdict against Cara Rintala to voluntary manslaughter or second-degree murder.
In a decision Thursday, Judge Mary-Lou Rup wrote she did not conclude that a “verdict of voluntary manslaughter or of murder in the second degree is ‘more consonant with justice’ than the verdict returned by the jury.”
Rup’s ruling responded to a request by Rintala’s defense team in late November to reduce the Oct. 7 verdict by a Hampshire Superior Court jury, which found Rintala guilty in the 2010 death of her wife, Annamarie Cochrane Rintala. A judge has the discretion to modify a jury’s verdict.
Annamarie Cochrane Rintala, 37, was found bloodied and strangled to death in March 2010 at the bottom of the basement stairs inside the Granby home she shared with Cara and their young daughter, who was then 2 years old. Cochrane Rintala’s body was doused in paint, which prosecutors argued was an attempt by Cara Rintala to conceal her involvement by contaminating physical evidence.
Rintala was tried twice earlier in 2013 and 2014, with both trials ending in deadlocked juries. Preceding the October murder conviction, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled in January that Rintala could be tried a third time.
In reaching her decision, Judge Rup wrote that she considered Cara Rintala’s background, evidence presented at her trial, including from medical examiners, who opined that strangulation caused Annamarie Rintala’s death. During the monthlong trial, prosecutors characterized the Rintalas’ relationship as being tumultuous and rooted in dysfunction, citing divorce filings, jealous text messages, heated arguments, and multiple instances of police involvement.
“The defendant argues that entry of a guilty finding of manslaughter is warranted,” Judge Rup wrote. “She asserts that the evidence supported a factual finding of a killing committed during a sudden affray, and that the Commonwealth neither argued nor suggested that she planned in advance to kill her wife.”
Rup wrote that as described by medical witnesses, strangulation as the method causing death “would have warranted the jury’s finding of deliberate premeditation.”
“Deliberate premeditation does not require advance planning or even an extended time span; as a matter of law, the requisite intent can be formed in as little as a matter of seconds,” she wrote. “While the Supreme Judicial Court has ‘recognized the propriety of a discretionary reduction of a verdict of murder in the first degree when the evidence of premeditation was slim,’ … this was not such a case.”
Dan Crowley can be reached at dcrowley@gazettenet.com.