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Guthrie-Nail capital murder trial Day 3: Defendant sentenced to 50 years in prison after guilty plea
By Bill Conrad, bconrad@starlocalnews.com
Update 12:30 p.m.
Victim's impact statements were delivered and the case is officially over. Full story to come.
Update 11:50 a.m.
The capital murder charge against her will be dropped in return for her guilty plea. She also has waived her right to appeal.
Update 10:50 a.m.
The court has been in recess since shortly after 10 a.m. Judge Mark Rusch is still in his chambers, while the prosecution and defense attorneys meet privately outside the court room.
Update 9:35 a.m.
The jury will remain outside the courtroom for at least another hour while Judge Mark Rusch determines what to do with the testimony of a convicted murderer.
Mark Bell is on the stand but testifies he doesn't remember many of the details of the murder of Craig Nail, a crime he pleaded guilty to last year.
Bell told the judge a head injury he suffered when he was 3 or 4 years old causes him to suffer from blackouts and memory loss.
With Bell saying he is unable to remember the events, prosecutors presented an audio interview conducted last year. On a small portion of the tape played outside the jury's presence, Bell admits his involvement in the crime and implicates the defendant, Vera Elizabeth Guthrie-Nail.
Original entry
The capital murder trial of a Carrollton woman accused of hiring a hitman to kill her ex-husband continues in Collin County.
According to prosecutors, Vera Elizabeth Guthrie-Nail, 47, hired Mark Lyle Bell to kill Craig Nail, 36. Nail was shot and killed on Dec. 26, 2007 at his Frisco home on Pebblebrook Drive. Nail's girlfriend was also shot two times, but was able to make it a neighbor's house and alert police.
Thomas Edward Grace has also been implicated in the alleged murder-for-hire plot, and has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit aggravated assault. He has not yet been sentenced.
Prosecutors called Bell, 56, who is currently serving a life sentence after pleading guilty to capital murder last year, to the stand Wednesday morning. Bell testified that he was heavily medicated at the time of his guilty plea and at subsequent interviews, and that he doesn't recall many specific details of the crime. This caused Judge Mark Rusch to send the jury out of the room while a hearing could be conducted on Bell's competency.
Judge Rusch overruled the objection, but as of 9:15 a.m. the jury was still not back in the court room while recordings of a police interview with Bell were played.
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