BY KRISTEN DELGUZZI
The Cincinnati Enquirer
In a dramatic courtroom scene, Linda Khriss made history Friday by becoming only the second person in nearly two decades to beat a death penalty case in Hamilton County.
The previous acquittal came in 1989 in another murder-for-hire case.
The latest came nearly 14 hours after jurors began considering the aggravated murder case against Mrs. Khriss, who was accused of hiring a hit man to kill her husband.
As the words "not guilty" were read in court, the 38-year-old Cheviot woman leaped from her chair, arms raised, and began sobbing. "Yes, yes," she cried as she hugged defense attorney David Scacchetti. "Thank you, Jesus."
While Mr. Scacchetti cried, Mrs. Khriss looked to the jury and said, "Thank you," again and again. Many of the jurors smiled and nodded. Others cried, and several patted one another on the back.
"This is as good as it gets," a teary Mr. Scacchetti said later. The case represents only the second time since 1981 -- Ohio reinstated its death penalty law that year -- that a defendant in a capital case in Hamilton County walked out the door. In many of the more than 130 capital cases indicted locally, defendants were acquitted of aggravated murder but convicted of other charges, such as involuntary manslaughter.
Had Mrs. Khriss been convicted, she could have become the only woman on Ohio's death row.
"I didn't do it and I knew I was going to get off," Ms. Khriss said Friday evening while leaving the Hamilton County Justice Center.
Mrs. Khriss' acquittal capped a trial filled with allegations of police misconduct and punctuated by emotional outbursts from Mrs. Khriss.
It also marked the end of Mrs. Khriss' incarceration. She had been in jail since Dec. 4, when she was arrested in the death of her husband.
Maher Khrais, 35, was found dead Nov. 22 in the parking lot of the store he and his wife owned. His brother, Ziad Khreis, 49, was lying next to him. Both had been shot execution-style with a Chinese assault rifle.
Two weeks later -- just one day after Mrs. Khriss had returned from her husband's funeral in Jordan -- Cincinnati police arrested her. They based their case largely on a 39-minute tape-recorded statement.
On the tape, she claims to have hired someone for $2,000 to beat up her husband so he would know how it felt when he abused her. She denied hiring someone to kill him.
At her trial in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court, Mrs. Khriss claimed the statement was a fake. She said police tricked her into making incriminating comments by telling her it would help build their case against the accused middleman and the gunman.
"She comes from a country where if the police ask you to do something, you do it," Mr. Scacchetti said, explaining why his client, who is Jordanian, would make a false statement.
Ahmad Fawzi Issa, an employee at the grocery, is accused of brokering the deal. Store customer Andre Miles is the accused gunman; he testified against Mrs. Khriss, saying he shot the brothers because Mr. Issa told him Mrs. Khriss wanted them dead.
Both men are awaiting aggravated-murder trials and could be sentenced to death if convicted.
At the trial, Mr. Scacchetti attacked Mr. Miles' testimony, saying there was no reason to believe him, since he never spoke directly with Mrs. Khriss.
Several other prosecution witnesses had credibility problems, and there was conflicting evidence on other key points, including whether Mrs. Khriss paid Mr. Issa after the slayings.
Mrs. Khriss insisted she did not give him two $1,000 bundles of $20 bills. A store employee said she saw Mrs. Khriss give Mr. Issa money, but another person said the money the employee saw was store revenue that was being prepared for deposit.
The defense also argued many people had threatened Mr. Khrais in the weeks before his death. Mr. Scacchetti said police rushed to judgment and assumed -- based on "preconceived notions" -- that Mrs. Khriss was involved.
As she waited for the verdict to be read Friday, Mrs. Khriss was trembling but subdued. Her demeanor was in sharp contrast to her actions during the trial, when she frequently sobbed and cried out. Her attorney spent much of the time in court trying to console her and calm her down.
"I have no fear. No fear whatsoever," she told several friends in the courtroom. "It's in His hands."
Then, as the jury was gathering outside the courtroom, she reached out and patted Mr. Scacchetti's hand and told him to relax.
"This is a switch," he laughed. "She's telling me to relax." Prosecutors accepted the verdict, but they were critical of allegations that police manufactured evidence in the case.
"That's just garbage," Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters said. "They did in the O.J. Simpson case. If the jury wants to believe it, there's nothing we can do about it. To believe that an officer in Cincinnati would risk his career to convolute a confession is just ridiculous."
None of the jurors wanted to talk about their verdict or their deliberations. But Judge Ann Marie Tracey, who spoke with them after the trial, said the group left no stone unturned.
"They did a logical, detailed analysis of the evidence and simply concluded the state had not proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt," she said. "They were very businesslike."
