Ward v. State

WILNER, Judge.

In the mid-afternoon of December 15, 1986, the protracted break-up of the relationship between appellant and Peggy Gray reached an abrupt conclusion. After a last, acrimonious telephone conversation between the two, appellant armed himself with a shotgun and drove to Gray’s home. There, he kicked open the front door and, calling out Gray’s name, launched a room-to-room search until he tracked her down in the basement where she was trying to flee through a back door. Then, before four witnesses, he shot Gray to death.

A Vietnam veteran, appellant pled not criminally responsible by…