Margaret H. Small, copyright 2007
	Donna Moonda weeps in the wake of the jury's verdict yesterday. Click photo for larger image. Listen In Staff writer Milan Simonich describes the scene in theAkron, Ohio, courtroom as Donna Moonda was found guilty on all counts. A guide to the Moonda case Previous Post-Gazette articles, photos and graphics, plus federal court documents, are available on our Moonda index page.
	Phil Long, Associated Press
	Defense attorney Roger Synenberg answers a reporters' question about the murder conviction against Donna Moonda as fellow defense attorney David Grant, right listens, outside U.S. Federal Court in Akron, Ohio yesterday. Click photo for larger image.
	Phil Long, Associated Press
	Assistant U.S. attorneys, Linda Barr, left, and Nancy Kelley, address the media about the jury's verdict outside U.S. Federal Court in Akron, Ohio, yesterday. Click photo for larger image.

AKRON, Ohio -- A calm, dry-eyed jury of 12 yesterday convicted Donna Moonda of murder for hire and two other capital crimes in the shooting death of her husband on the Ohio Turnpike.

Mrs. Moonda, 48, burst into tears, then said to her lawyers: "I didn't do it. I did not do it."

She cried so much that the defense table filled with tissues during the 15-minute climax to her three-week trial.

None of the seven women and five men on the jury seemed moved by her tears. One female juror looked straight at Mrs. Moonda. The rest kept their eyes on U.S. District Judge David Dowd, who polled the jurors individually after he read their verdicts.

Jurors also convicted Mrs. Moonda of the other three charges she faced -- interstate stalking and two counts of aiding in the use of a firearm in the death of her 69-year-old husband, Dr. Gulam Moonda.

Murder for hire and the firearms crimes are capital offenses, so the jurors will reconvene July 16 for the second part of the trial. They will decide whether Mrs. Moonda should be put to death or spend the rest of her life in prison.

Faroq Moonda, Dr. Moonda's nephew, said in an interview last night that he felt justice had been done, even though her punishment has not been determined.

"I'm glad that this is over, and we can all get some closure from this terrible tragedy," Faroq Moonda said.

For Mrs. Moonda, the verdict is only a beginning. Even if jurors spare her life, she faces the prospect of dying in prison. Either way, she probably will be appealing her convictions for years.

David L. Grant, one of Mrs. Moonda's lawyers, said he has a simple goal now that she has been found guilty: "I want to save her life," he said.

Her lead attorney, Roger Synenberg, said the convictions were unexpected by the defense team, which thought it had punched enough holes in the government's case to get an acquittal.

"Donna is disappointed by the verdict, [and] I think a little bit shocked," he said.

Assistant U.S. attorneys Nancy Kelley and Linda Barr, who prosecuted Mrs. Moonda, knew convictions were likely after the jurors reached a verdict after only nine hours of deliberation.

"Obviously we're gratified by the jury's verdict," Ms. Barr said. She declined to say anything else because the penalty phase is ahead.

During her closing argument, Ms. Barr had denounced Mrs. Moonda as a liar, a cheat and woman who loved money so much that she had her husband murdered to get his inheritance.

Mrs. Moonda, of Hermitage, Pa., was having an affair during the last year of her marriage.

Damian Bradford, 26, the young man she was seeing romantically, is also the man who killed her husband on May 13, 2005. He shot Dr. Moonda on the turnpike in what was supposed to look like a highway robbery.

Mrs. Moonda's defense was built around the idea that she could not have recognized Mr. Bradford because he could have worn a mask, he could have disguised his voice and he could have driven a minivan that was unfamiliar to her.

But Mr. Bradford, who pleaded guilty last year and testified for the prosecution, said Mrs. Moonda arranged her husband's murder and recruited him to pull the trigger.

He said she told him of a turnpike trip that she, her mother and her husband were taking, and that she wanted Dr. Moonda killed then. Mr. Bradford followed the Moondas, then killed the urologist after Mrs. Moonda abruptly pulled the family Jaguar into an emergency parking lane of the turnpike.

Mrs. Moonda did not testify during her trial, but what she said early in the investigation helped convict her.

She told members of the Ohio highway patrol that the shooter was a scrawny man who stood 5 feet 3 inches tall. She insisted the killer could not have been Mr. Bradford, who is a muscular man of 5 feet 10 inches.

Later, when police closed in on Mr. Bradford and he pleaded guilty, Mrs. Moonda's comment would stick to her like tar.

Prosecutors said Mrs. Moonda had lied for Mr. Bradford for one reason -- she was his partner in crime.

Her lawyers countered that Mrs. Moonda was so terrified that she did not realize the killer was her own boyfriend.

Mr. Synenberg said that Mrs. Moonda, a loving daughter, would never have set up a murder in front of her 76-year-old mother, Dorothy Smouse.

He also said Mrs. Moonda, who has a master's degree in nursing, would have been too smart to have her husband killed on a bustling toll road, where a state trooper could have happened by as the crime unfolded.

For all the clumsiness of the plot, prosecutors said, Mr. Bradford and Mrs. Moonda nearly got away with murder.

Their big mistake, Ms. Barr said in her closing argument, was using cell phones purchased by Mrs. Moonda to communicate the day of the killing.

Tower tracking records of these calls placed Mr. Bradford at the murder scene at the time Dr. Moonda was shot.

Had they not left a trail through their cell phone calls, the audacious murder on the turnpike would not have been solved, Ms. Barr said.

Now, with her life on the line, Mrs. Moonda may find that Mr. Bradford can help her.

His plea bargain with prosecutors calls for him to serve as little as 171/2 years in prison. Mrs. Moonda's lawyers will tell jurors that Mr. Bradford, who fired a hollow-point bullet into Dr. Moonda's face, could be out of prison before he is 40. Then they will say that the prosecutors want Mrs. Moonda executed, even though she did not pull the trigger.

Another likely claim for the defense is that Mrs. Moonda was a law-abiding citizen until she became addicted to drugs. Executives at UPMC Horizon fired her from her nursing job for stealing painkillers, then lying about it.

With her career in shambles and prosecutors charging her for stealing prescription drugs, Mrs. Moonda went to a drug rehabilitation center in 2004. It was there that she met Mr. Bradford, a small-time drug dealer and cocaine addict.

"She started leaving messages on my phone," said Mr. Bradford, who ditched his girlfriend, Charlene McFrazier, to move into an apartment where Mrs. Moonda paid his rent.

After Dr. Moonda's murder, Ms. McFrazier phoned police with a tip. She said Mrs. Moonda was having an affair with a young man named Damian.

Information from this scorned woman led investigators to Mr. Bradford. They confiscated his cell phones, and were on their way to cracking the case.

Mrs. Moonda's lawyers say she was victim of circumstance, not a murderer. The jurors, though, had the last word, and they did not believe her.