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Court to hear appeal in domestic murder
Tanya Harden
Purchase this photoCHARLESTON -- The state Supreme Court of Appeals unanimously agreed to hear a wife's appeal of her murder conviction in a domestic homicide case from 2004.
The case involved Tanya Harden and the killing of her husband, Danuel L. Harden. He died Sept. 5, 2004, at the couple's home on Balls Branch Road in Culloden.
The husband's death followed a night of horrific fighting. Tanya Harden told jurors she felt threatened and abused. She suffered a broken nose, black eyes and bruises to her face and chest.
But prosecutors faulted the mother of two for not calling police sooner. They argued the fight was over and her husband was half asleep when she killed him out of revenge.
The couple's two children, along with their friend, testified for the prosecution at the May 2007 trial.
Tanya Harden's attorneys petitioned the state Supreme Court to hear her appeal last week. The high court's five justices accepted the case. They likely will hear arguments from both sides next year.
The jury convicted Harden of first-degree murder in May 2007. The victim's family recommended she receive life with mercy in prison. She will be eligible for parole in 2022.
Defense attorneys hope to speed up her release. They argue Cabell Circuit Judge Alfred Ferguson committed several errors at trial.
They cite the court's admission of irrelevant and gruesome photographs, failure to excuse a prospective juror for cause, admission of speculative evidence, improper instruction regarding lost or destroyed evidence. They also note a failure to rebut her self-defense claim and argue her lawyer was improperly ordered not to object to the prosecution's closing argument.
Tanya Harden's trial court attorneys argued police destroyed evidence, including the couch the victim died upon.
In August 2005, Harden declined an offer to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter. It would have carried a sentence of three to 15 years in prison, instead of her current life with mercy sentence.
