Daniel Chavez, the man who stabbed his wife to death in Medart in 2005, was found guilty of second-degree murder after a two-day trial.

Chavez was found guilty of first-degree murder at a trial three years ago that was reversed after the First District Court of Appeal ruled that testimony about threats he made against his wife were hearsay and should not have been allowed in.

Chavez was sentenced to life in prison after the first trial. He could face the same penalty when Wakulla Circuit Judge N. Sanders Sauls sentences him in July.

It took the jury about an hour and a half to return its verdict. The prosecution was asking the jury to find him guilty of premeditated murder, while the defense was seeking a lesser charge of manslaughter.

It was never a case of who killed Kathy Partida Chavez, the 23-year-old victim in the case. The question of the trial, held Tuesday and Wednesday, June 16 and 17, was whether Daniel Chavez had murder in his mind when he confronted his young wife that day outside the Medart home of Patsy Haley, where Kathy Chavez had gone four days earlier to get away from her husband.

On that Sunday morning in September 2005, Haley and Kathy Chavez were getting dressed to go to church when Daniel Chavez pulled up to the house in his truck. Kathy Chavez didn’t want to go outside to speak with him, but Haley encouraged her to go talk, saying she would call 911 and have law enforcement on the way.

The couple argued. Haley heard Kathy Chavez yell, “No, Daniel, no!” and then there was a blood-curdling scream – at the same time a deputy pulled into the yard. The deputy and Haley ran to where the Chavezes lay on the ground – Kathy Chavez mortally wounded by two stab wounds in her heart.

Her final words to Haley: “He stabbed me. Miss Patsy, he’s killed me.”

At the first trial, Chavez testified that he loved his wife and couldn’t live without her and that, when he saw her that day and refused to return home with him, he tried to kill himself – and that the words “No, Daniel, no!” were said as Kathy Chavez tried to grab the knife from him.

Chavez was treated that day for superficial wounds.

Chavez did not testify at the re-trial, and the lead defense attorney, Assistant Public Defender Ines Suber, complained that it was because of an earlier ruling by the court that, depending on what he might say on the stand, Chavez might open the door for the state to bring in the issue of the threats he made about killing his wife.

When the verdict was read, Chavez showed no emotion, but just stared straight ahead.

“I’m kind of surprised the jury didn’t believe it was manslaughter,” Suber said afterwards.

The defense contended it was a crime of passion and, in opening statement, Assistant Public Defender Nicole Jameson said the jury should find Chavez guilty of manslaughter.

Assistant Public Defender Marybeth Bohannon gave a dramatic closing argument, in which she called out the words of Daniel Chavez as the deputy pulled him off his wife’s mortally wounded body: “Mi amor! Mi amor! (My love! My love)”

He then said in English, “That’s my wife.”

The family of Kathy Chavez – her mother, stepfather and friends – looked startled.

After a private meeting with Assistant State Attorney Jack Campbell, who prosecuted the case, Kathy Chavez’s mother said she was pleased with the verdict – and said she was hopeful that Chavez would be sentenced to life in prison.

Sitting through a trial a second time, she said, was like losing her daughter all over again. She tried not to show emotion during the trial, she said, but at times she had to get up and leave the courtroom.

Campbell said that he would be asking the court to sentence Chavez again to life in prison.

“He still stabbed his wife to death as she got ready to go to church on a Sunday morning,” he said.