Husband convicted of first-degree murder

The Daly City man who claimed his wife was already dead in a pool of blood when he returned home from a night with his girlfriend is guilty of fatally stabbing her multiple times before fleeing with their three young children, according to a jury who deliberated six days before returning its decision yesterday morning.

The first-degree murder conviction against Quincy Dean Norton, Sr., plus the additional allegation of using a knife in the crime means the 33-year-old man receives 26 years to life in prison when sentenced July 7.

"I’m enormously relieved by the verdict because now the [Norton] boys can start to put this behind them and we don’t have to ask them to testify again,” said prosecutor Al Giannini. "That was an enormous tension running through this whole case.”

The family is similarly grateful for both the conviction and the jurors who after wrestling between second and first-degree murder, opted for the more serious verdict, Giannini said.

Defense attorney Pat Fox did not return a call for comment.

The verdict came after a three-week trial which pitted Norton’s story of finding his wife against a prosecution case including the testimony of his two oldest children and his wife’s family. The defense implied Norton’s girlfriend, Anitra Johnson, had a hand in the death of Tamika Mack Norton, 33, but in the end jurors sided with the prosecution theory that Norton killed his wife after she filed for divorce and asked that he have limited contact with their three children.

With Norton taking the stand to tell jurors personally he was not guilty, the case boiled down to two main questions — were children Dion and Quincy Norton, Jr. correct when they testified about hearing their mother scream and seeing their father in the home June 22, 2006? Also, if Johnson was not involved in Mack Norton’s death, how did her genetic profile turn up on two locations in the woman’s kitchen?

In its verdict, the juror apparently answered yes to the first question and decided the second didn’t matter since, as prosecution experts testified, the DNA evidence was on the handle of a knife later dismissed as a murder weapon.

From his opening statement, Giannini argued Mack Norton’s murder was the tragic, inevitable end to a tumultuous and violent relationship fueled by jealousy and alcohol. Giannini asked jurors to believe that although Quincy Norton had multiple female relationships including that with Johnson, he wouldn’t accept the same in his wife and in stereotypical batterer behavior stalked her through cell phone calls and accusations of infidelity. When Mack Norton, spurred by the death of a close friend, decided to divorce her husband and begin life anew, he stabbed her multiple times with a kitchen knife before spiriting their children away and remaining at large for five weeks, according to Giannini.

Norton testified on his own behalf, however, he never sought to marry his wife and was "cool” with the divorce. Their marriage, he said, wasn’t "some happy thing” and his relationship with Johnson was no secret.

He testified his wife had agreed to reconcile before he headed to Johnson’s to see her and his daughter; after an evening in which Johnson grew angry about the reconciliation and drove off alone from her home, Norton said he awoke to his girlfriend washing in the bathroom and later arrived at his Daly City home to find his wife apparently dead in a bedroom.

Rather than phone 911, Norton said he scooped up their 1-year-old daughter from the bed, ordered his 7 and 9 year old sons to dress and dropped them at the home of his brother’s girlfriend. He wasn’t at large, he testified, but avoided police out of fear they would kill him on sight. He was arrested at a San Jose bus stop five weeks after the murder, a period in which Johnson reportedly helped him evade police and during which he said he wanted to surrender but was apprehended before he could do so.

Daly City police found Mack Norton’s body July 22, 2006 after family members grew concerned because she did not attend the friend’s funeral which she had organized and for whom she had taken a collection.

Norton’s children, now 11 and 9 years old, testified about seeing their father in the home that day and hearing their mother scream their names. Quincy Norton, Jr. said he went to his mother’s room in response and saw his father holding her down. The child did not remember seeing a weapon or blood before his father ordered him back to his room. Both boys said the elder Norton came out of the room and told them to get dressed before heading to their mom’s car and going to McDonald’s in East Palo Alto for breakfast. Dion Norton recalled his father wearing a different shirt when leaving and carrying a balled up shirt in his hand.

Norton, however, testified he, his wife and the children went to the mall the previous day where the males all bought new shirts. The boys, he claimed, were confused about when events happened and had been coerced into believing they actually occurred the day their mother died. Similarly, Norton said, his wife called for the boys July 21, 2006 rather than the next morning.

In closing arguments, Giannini told jurors if they believed the boys heard their mother scream, Norton is a murderer because she died quickly of an air embolism caused by a knife wound to the neck. He also cautioned them that Norton’s defense was to concede what he must, explain what he could and dismiss all other evidence as lies.

Fox told jurors the Norton children were not credible and asked them to consider what evidence may have been destroyed in the Norton home by shoddy crime scene investigation.

The jury retired to deliberated last Tuesday afternoon, only asking to reread a portion of Norton’s testimony. On Thursday afternoon, a juror was dismissed and the panel ordered back Monday morning for replacement with an alternate. Deliberations began anew and the jury returned the verdict first thing Thursday morning.

In deciding Norton’s guilt in his wife’s death, jurors were also asked to consider if he had also seriously beat her in 2003. Tamika Mack Norton reported the assault to police and her family but recanted in San Francisco Superior Court, instead claiming her split lip and black eyes were from a physical fight with Johnson. The charges were later dismissed but Giannini introduced the incident into this trial as an example of what he said was Norton’s violent history.

Evidence like that, however, will be moot if a pending Senate bill passes the Legislature banning courts from compelling domestic violence victims to testify or face jailing on contempt charges, Giannini said, referring to legislation authored by state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco/San Mateo.

Although Tamika Mack Norton lied on the record, her testimony and the surrounding evidence was preserved, allowing it to be used now, Giannini said.

"If Yee’s legislation was already passed, we might not have been able to get a conviction,” he said.

Yee’s bill has touched off heated debate between victim advocates and the senator and the District Attorney’s Office whose attempted jailing of an alleged victim sparked the proposed legislation initially.

Norton remains in custody on no-bail status pending sentencing.

Michelle Durand can be reached by e-mail: michelle@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: (650) 344-5200 ext. 102.