Northern California man could face third trial in 1992 murder case

SAN JOSE, Calif. (CN) — A California appellate court on Thursday reversed a lower court finding that a Northern California man could not be retried in a murder case he stood trial for twice in the 1990s.

John Woodward was tried twice in the 1990s for the murder of Laurie Houts, his roommate’s girlfriend. Prosecutors argued at the time that Woodward, who is gay, strangled Houts in her car because he was jealous of her relationship with his roomate.

The first trial ended in with a deadlocked jury in 1995, and a second trial in 1996 was dismissed due to a lack of evidence. Woodward moved to Amsterdam after his case was dismissed, where he worked as the president and chief executive of ReadyTech, an online training company.

In 2022, prosecutors said they found new DNA evidence on the rope used to strangle Houts and arrested Woodward when he visited New York for a vacation. He was extradited to California, where prosecutors aimed to put him on trial for a third time.

This past August, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Shella Deen ruled the 1996 dismissal was functionally an acquittal, and that trying him a third time would amount to double jeopardy. Prosecutors appealed the decision.

On Thursday, a three-judge panel from the Sixth Appellate District ordered Deen to vacate her decision.

Writing for the panel, Justice Allison Danner, a Jerry Brown appointee, found the 1996 minute order that mentioned an “insufficiency of evidence” to retry Woodward, which Deen relied on in her ruling, was not definitive proof that Woodward was protected from being prosecuted again.

Danner wrote that Woodward needed to meet the “substantial evidence standard” to dodge another trial. To meet that standard, Woodward needed to prove that the trial court viewed the evidence in a light most favorable to the prosecution. The standard comes into play when there’s a question about whether a jury would have enough evidence to convict.

“There is no clear indication in the record that the trial court viewed the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution and concluded that no rational trier of fact could have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” Danner wrote. “We therefore cannot construe the dismissal order as an acquittal. We conclude the constitutional protection against double jeopardy does not bar the refiling of the murder charge against Woodward.”

Woodward’s attorneys made the double-jeopardy argument based on the 1996 minute order by Judge Lawrence Terry. After the second mistrial, Terry ordered that the murder charge be “dismissed in the furtherance of justice for insufficiency of the evidence.” This language, according to Woodward’s attorneys, amounted to an acquittal that prohibited future prosecution of Woodward in the Houts murder.

The Santa Clara District Attorney’s office argued that Terry’s language was taken out of context, and that later in the document he had written “without new evidence, the result of this case will be the same at each successive trial.”

The DNA found on the rope in 2022 amounts to the new evidence needed, prosecutors argued.

”We are pleased with the decision and remain determined to bring John Woodward to justice for his murder of Laurie Houts,” the Santa Clara District Attorney’s office wrote in a statement.

Woodward can now face trial for the third time in the Houts slaying, though he could appeal the appellate decision to the California Supreme Court. His attorney did not respond to requests for comment asking if he planned to appeal.