This is totally amazing to me and I don't know how it bodes for the Zimmerman case!!!!

'We're going to Waffle House': Husband and wife go celebrate after he's acquitted for shooting dead her young lover when he found them having sex on the living room floor

By Michael Zennie and Snejana Farberov

PUBLISHED: 08:38 EST, 31 May 2013 | UPDATED: 09:16 EST, 31 May 2013

A jury in Florida has acquitted a 70-year-old Vietnam War veteran accused of shooting dead an actor half his age whom he caught having sex with his wife in the couple’s home.

It took the jurors two hours Thursday to clear retired Lt. Col. Ralph Wald of second-degree murder charges in the March 10 slaying of 32-year-old Walter Conley.

Prosecutors said Wald heard his wife, 41-year-old Johnna Lynn Flores, and Conley having sex in the living room of their Brandon home, grabbed a gun and shot the actor three times, killing him.

The 70-year-old man, however, claimed self-defense, saying that he thought his wife was being raped.

Wald's attorney, Joe Episcopo, has built his defense around Florida 'stand your ground ' law, which says that a homeowner has no obligation to retreat when faced with an intruder on his property.

In court Thursday, the defendant said he does not regret shooting and killing his wife's lover, MyFox Tampa Bay reported.

'If the same thing happened again, I would do the same thing,’ Wald said. ‘I didn't think I did anything wrong.'

He then added: 'I had a problem, I found someone raping my wife. I took care of it. I got a gun and I shot him.

He also expressed hope that he and Flores would be able to salvage their marriage – a process that would likely require counselling for their sexual problems.

‘In fact, she would joke a lot with me … that we were a perfect couple,’ Wald said. ‘She didn't want to do it, and I couldn't do it.’

Outside the Hillsborough Circuit Court, Wald's philandering spouse gushed to the gathered reporters that she was 'elated' by her husband's acquittal.

And the happy couple had a special evening planned ahead to celebrate Wald's release from jail.

'Because my husband puts me first, he's taking me to the Waffle House,' Flores boasted, according to Tampa Bay Times.

Hours after the not guilty verdict, Wald's wife hinted that the couple may be on the road to reconciliation.

‘My husband forgives me 100 per cent. But there are of course, trust issues, that's something we're gonna go to counseling about, she said as she waited for her husband's release from jail. ‘I wouldn't give that man up for the world.’

When the bearded septuagenarian walked out of Orient Road Jail, he and Flores exchanged a passionate kiss before getting into a waiting car and taking off.

The two-day trial held at Hillborough Circuit Court offered a portrait of a troubled marriage made complicated by the husband’s erectile dysfunction and the wife’s alcohol addiction and infidelity.

Prosecutors in the case tried to convince the jury that since Wald himself could not perform sexually, he murdered Conley in a jealous rage when he walked in on the 32-year-old man having sex with his wife at around midnight on March 10.

‘It's a personal insult to conduct that kind of activity in a man's home, his castle. It cuts to the quick. It's brazen,’ Assistant State Attorney Chris Moody said in closing arguments. ‘That kind of deep and personal insult, when you find another man having sex in your living room and you can't, would make you want to lash out. And he did.’

However, defense attorney Joe Episcopo argued that his client did not recognize Conley - his wife's ex-boyfriend - and was under the impression that the man was raping Flores.


Wald said he got out of bed about midnight March 10 to get a drink of water when he found Flores and Conley having sex on the living room floor in his home in Brandon, Florida.


According to Hillsborough County Sheriff's deputies, Wald went back to his room and returned with a handgun.

He shot Conley, who lived on Lover's Lane in nearby Riverview, several times. He died at the scene.


Wald called 911 and said he had killed Conley after he caught him 'fornicating' with his 41-year-old wife, according to police.

Flores testified during the trial that she was drunk on cognac and could remember almost nothing from that night.

Conley's relatives, who were in court to hear the verdict, could be seen silently weeping when Wald was acquitted. Afterwards, one family member said he was disappointed by the outcome of the trial, the station WTSP reported.

Flores lived with Conley before she married Wald five months last year. She is Wald's fifth wife.

Ms Flores was arrested last October - just two weeks before she and Wald were married - for allegedly firing a shot of Conley.


She said he came over and refused to leave. Conley told police Flores invited him back to the home they used to share.


She and Conley, who had a record of petty thefts and worked as a laborer, had shared a house next door to Wald in the community of Brandon.


Flores allegedly shot at Conley at 3am on October 19. She and Wald were dating then and he bailed her out of jail. Those charges were later dropped.

Ms Flores and Wald married on October 25.


Wald, a U.S. Army veteran, has a 20-year-old daughter with a previous wife.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... floor.html

Kath, be sure you take a look at our Two "stand your ground" Florida legal decisions thread ~ your op here is one of the two cases ~ but it's the 2d case that enraged me at least equally and maybe even more ~

Sooz

I must have missed that when I was sailing away. LOL!!!

That second story is disgusting. I found this. This spells not guilty to me. I always wonder if I want to be judged by a jury of my peers.


On Aug. 1, 2010, Marissa Alexander, a 31-year-old mother of three, with a Master’s degree and no criminal record, was working for a payroll software company in Jacksonville. She was estranged from her abusive husband, Rico Gray, and had a restraining order against him. Thinking he was not at home, she went to their former house to get some belongings. The two got into an argument. Alexander says that Gray threatened her and she feared for her life. Gray corroborates Alexander’s story: “I was in a rage. I called her a whore and bitch and . . . I told her… if I can’t have you, nobody going to have you,” he said, in a deposition. When Alexander retreated into the bathroom, Gray tried to break the door. She ran into the garage, but couldn’t leave because it was locked. She came back, he said, with a registered gun, which she legally owned, and yelled at him to leave. Gray recalls, “I told her… I ain’t going nowhere, and so I started walking toward her…I was cursing and all that… and she shot in the air.” Even Gray understands why Alexander fired the warning shot: “If my kids wouldn’t have been there, I probably would have put my hand on her. Probably hit her. I got five baby mommas and I put my hands on every last one of them, except for one …. I honestly think she just didn’t want me to put my hands on her anymore so she did what she feel like she have to do to make sure she wouldn’t get hurt, you know. You know, she did what she had to do.” And Gray admits Alexander was acting in self-defense, intending to scare and stop but not harm him: “The gun was never actually pointed at me… The fact is, you know . . . she never been violent toward me. I was always the one starting it.” Ultimately nobody was hurt. Nobody died. On May 12, 2012, it took a jury 12 minutes to find Alexander guilty of aggravated assault. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

http://www.alternet.org/stand-your-grou ... e-standard

WOW!!! ~ I was rabid without knowing the full story! ~ thanks for finding this, Kath ~ of course it should have been a "not guilty" verdict ~ and a 20-year sentence is ... obscene ~ what a lot of people don't understand is that a judge more or less controls what a jury hears ~

Sooz

Psstt... Marissa Alexander is African-American.
That makes her automatically guilty in Florida.