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HOUSTON (AP) — A woman convicted of running down her cheating husband should get a new murder trial because jurors didn't get to hear evidence that she struck him accidentally with her vehicle, her attorney told an appeals panel Wednesday.
Prosecutors argue even though the evidence wasn't allowed in the format Clara Harris wanted, jurors heard the theory the 46-year-old former dentist accidentally hit her husband as he stood outside his mistress's car outside the hotel where the Harrises wed a decade earlier.
"We believe it was an intentional act from the moment she saw him," said Kevin Keating, a Harris County assistant district attorney. "The jury saw the defense theory, and the jury rejected it."
Harris' attorney, George McCall Secrest, told a three-judge panel from the 1st Court of Appeals that the trial court erred by not allowing jurors to see a videotape and re-creation of the path Harris' Mercedes-Benz took when David Harris, an orthodontist, was struck and killed in July 2002. He claims excluding the tapes led to an incomplete defense.
"Clara did not intentionally strike David and did not run over him repeatedly," Secrest said. "Her intention was to hit the vehicle. Her intention never was to strike anybody."
Secrest also argued the trial court kept defense attorneys from impeaching the testimony of David Harris' teenage daughter, who was in her stepmother's car and testified against her; that the judge should have allowed jurors to consider reckless driving as a lesser offense; and that defense attorneys should have been able to make opening and closing arguments in the trial's punishment phase.
Prosecutors dispute each of the contentions.
The appeals court can rule at any time.
Harris was convicted last year and sentenced to 20 years in prison. She had faced up to life but drew a lesser penalty because jurors found she was driven by "sudden passion." | 
