FATE OF WOMAN ACCUSED OF KILLING LOVER'S WIFE IN JURY'S HANDS; PROSECUTORS SAY GROCERY CLERK HAUN KILLED BOYFRIEND'S SPOUSE AS BIRTHDAY GIFT.

Byline: Associated Press 

Jury deliberations began Friday in the murder trial of Diana Haun, an occult-driven grocery clerk who prosecutors say beheaded her lover's wife as a human sacrifice for his birthday.

Superior Court Judge Frederick A. Jones read more than an hour of final instructions to the jury. The seven-man, five-woman panel began deliberations at 2:19 p.m.

Haun and lover Michael Dally were charged with murder, conspiracy and kidnapping, as well as two special-circumstance allegations of killing for financial gain and lying in wait. Dally's trial is scheduled to follow Haun's.

If Haun is convicted of first-degree murder and at least one of the special circumstances, the same jury will hear testimony in a penalty phase that could lead to a death sentence.

Deputy District Attorney Lela Henke-Dobroth told jurors Haun wanted to get rid of an obstacle in her life - Sherri Dally. The kidnapping and knife-and-ax killing were Michael Dally's early birthday gift, the prosecutor said.

``She murdered her in the most brutal fashion imaginable, and she threw her in the trash - in the dump,'' Henke-Dobroth said in her angry summation of the case.

But Deputy Public Defender Neil Quinn suggested Dally was responsible for the killing and that evidence linking his 36-year-old client to the May 6, 1996, kidnap-murder was circumstantial. There was no forensic evidence, such as fingerprints or hair fibers, he said.

Dally's brazen murder plan called for nerves of steel, and there is no way his lover could have kidnapped and killed the mother of two young sons, Quinn said.

Jurors, who listened to six weeks of testimony from more than 125 witnesses, were told that evidence points away from his client as the killer and that critical details about the killing remain a mystery.

``Diana Haun is not the abductor; Diana Haun is not the killer,'' Quinn said in his closing argument Thursday. ``The truth is you don't know what else happened.''

Quinn also called evidence about Haun's interest in witchcraft irrelevant, saying it only added a ``horrific'' aspect to the case to provoke an emotional response from the jury.

He displayed Haun's books on witchcraft, Celtic magic, karma and reincarnation and told the panel they detail spells for protecting oneself against evil rather than something sinister like human sacrifice.

Minutes before Quinn brought up the witchcraft evidence Thursday, those in the courtroom got a scare of their own when the courtroom was plunged into darkness for 10 seconds because of a brief power failure.