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| TV boss Muzzammil Hassan found guilty of beheading wife |
| 2011-02-08 |
| A New York television executive has been convicted of stabbing his wife to death and beheading her. A jury found Pakistan-born Muzzammil Hassan guilty of second-degree murder in the 2009 death of Aasiya Hassan six days after she filed for divorce. Hassan never denied killing her but said she had abused him and that he had acted in self-defence. He served as his own lawyer during the three-week trial. Hassan, who founded a Muslim-oriented TV network, could face life in prison. Prosecutors argued Hassan abused his wife and planned the attack in a hallway at Bridges TV, a satellite channel he set up in 2004 in an effort to counter negative portrayals of Muslims following the 9/11 terror attacks. He was arrested in 2009 after he walked into a police station in the city of Buffalo, in upstate New York, and told officers his wife was dead. Mrs Hassan, 37, had filed for divorce after enduring domestic violence, her lawyer told the Buffalo News newspaper in 2009. The couple had been married for eight years and had two children. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #17 From the Buffalo News... Yet during his two-hour closing statement, never once did Hassan mention the killing of his wife. Instead, his closing remarks echoed a she-started-it theme. He repeatedly told jurors that the prosecution was building its case solely based on vindictive falsehoods spread by his wife in the last two years of their marriage. "All these people are hearing stories," he told the jury in closing arguments. "They want you to believe stories are evidence. They have no witnesses." He attributed the piles of police complaints and medical reports indicating domestic abuse to prior disputes and arguments that he said led his wife to retaliate against him. He also said the judge, prosecutors, police officers and medical professionals who testified against him did so based on their preconceived notion that only women can be abuse victims. In closing arguments, he referred to their adherence to a "religion of patriarchy." He told jurors he stands against this gender-biased model of "false beliefs" the way Gandhi stood against colonialism, the way former President Ronald Reagan stood against communism and the way one-time South African President Nelson Mandela stood against apartheid. Prediction? He will not do well in prison... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2011-02-08 19:49 |
| #16 The short, unsuccessful legal career of Muzzammil Hassan... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2011-02-08 19:21 |
| #15 Thank you TW, interesting how the different states do things just a little bit different; I too read that as still alive. Garbage brutes his wife and stops by the station to fill out the paperwork. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2011-02-08 16:21 |
| #14 Ah, another opportunity to quote that bit of "The Horrible History of Jones." |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2011-02-08 14:57 |
| #13 OK, perhaps being facetious is not always the right thing. If you don't put a smiley or a /sarcasm indicator, it's highly likely I won't catch on, Dave UK. Sorry -- it's my handicap, not yours. So he decapitated her after she was dead? I believe it was the decapitating that killed her, not the stab wounds, Snowy Thing. Although perhaps she might have died of the multiple stab wounds had he not started sawing at her neck... |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2011-02-08 14:08 |
| #12 at what point could such action be considered premeditated? Apparently in New York, "murder in the first degree" is only for killing police and such, and carries the death penalty (I think). If it's just a generally premeditated killing, it's "murder in the second degree", carrying a sentence of 15 years to life imprisonment. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2011-02-08 14:01 |
| #11 When he didn't call the cops as she was bleeding to death? So he decapitated her after she was dead? |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2011-02-08 13:58 |
| #10 Not necessarily refering to this case, but at what point could such action be considered premeditated? When he didn't call the cops as she was bleeding to death? |
| Posted by: gorb 2011-02-08 13:31 |
| #9 OK, perhaps being facetious is not always the right thing. |
| Posted by: Dave UK 2011-02-08 12:32 |
| #8 Not necessarily refering to this case, but at what point could such action be considered premeditated? |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2011-02-08 12:12 |
| #7 So what was the cause of death ? She bled out while he was cutting off her head, Dave UK. The medical examiner's testimony was that she must have been in agony. The other article posted on this story links to the Buffalo News, and has links to all the stories written since Mr. Hassan turned himself in. A classic abuser, completely unaware that he was anything other than eminently reasonable. His children from a previous wife testified against him. The therapist they went to for marriage counselling, whom he called as a witness, testified against him. His own diary, which he introduced into evidence, testified against him, and he didn't realize it. And now all that money donated to create a Muslim satellite channel will have been wasted. How sad. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2011-02-08 10:49 |
| #6 Hassan never denied killing her but said she had abused him and that he had acted in self-defence. Obviously this guy's never heard of a double-edged sword. |
| Posted by: gorb 2011-02-08 10:18 |
| #5 Make him spend his last days in a women's prison, un-armed. |
| Posted by: Glomose White2063 2011-02-08 09:55 |
| #4 So what was the cause of death ? |
| Posted by: Dave UK 2011-02-08 09:37 |
| #3 Hassan never denied killing her but said she had abused him and that he had acted in self-defence. "I lost my head. Well, not literally. That was her" |
| Posted by: Frank G 2011-02-08 08:54 |
| #2 Well, NOW certainly hasn't been heard complaining about it. Diversity you know. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2011-02-08 08:49 |
| #1 It is a cultural thing, we must not rush to judgment. |
| Posted by: Steven 2011-02-08 08:27 |