Temple’s defense rests with eye on timing
David Temple’s defense rested on Thursday, setting the stage for closing arguments and jury deliberation next week in the 20-yearold case of the ex-football coach accused of killing his pregnant wife in Katy.
Temple, now 51, is standing trial for the second time in the Jan. 11, 1999, murder of Belinda Temple. A jury found him guilty in 2007 — a conviction that years later was overturned when an appeals court ruled that prosecutorial misconduct caused Temple to be denied a fair trial.
Defense attorneys wrapped up on their third day of witness testimony, centering around a crucial piece of evidence in the timeline of events leading up to Belinda Temple’s slaying. The Katy High School teacher was found in the late afternoon with a life-ending gunshot wound to the head, flat on her stomach in her master bedroom closet. Her husband has maintained that he arrived home from the store with his son and discovered his house burglarized and Belinda dead.
On Thursday, lawyers attempted to piece together the periods during which both Temples would have been home and before David left for the store. A videotaped deposition of David Temple’s father, Kenneth, was played, focusing on when he saw Belinda that day and the time she would have consequently gotten to her house.
Much of the deposition revolves around inconsistencies between Kenneth’s previous testimonies. He testified in 1999 before a grand jury that Belinda had arrived at his home around 3:45 p.m. on Jan. 11 to pick up soup for her sick 3-year-old son, Evan. That time was favorable to David because it meant Belinda would have left around 3:55 p.m. and gotten home around 4:10 p.m., narrowing the time that she would have been at the house with David before he went to the store.
David Temple was seen at 4:32 p.m. on video at a Brookshire Brothers grocery store, which was about 15 minutes away, according to earlier testimony.
During the 2007 trial, however, Kenneth Temple testified differently, stating that Belinda arrived at his home at 3:32 p.m. That would have given David enough time to kill Belinda and possibly change clothes before getting in the car with his son to go shopping, prosecutors said at the time.
During the videotaped deposition shown to jurors, Kenneth Temple told attorneys that the 2007 statement was made in error, in part because he was called to testify in the trial at the last minute.
“I had been cast among the wolves without any notice,” he said. “Then when I spoke something, that was in error. I did not have the benefit of an attorney to correct it at that moment.”
State prosecutors attempted to poke holes in Kenneth Temple’s story, but he repeated that he simply made a mistake. In his deposition, he once again stated that Belinda got to his house around 3:45 p.m.
Stanley Schneider, David Temple’s attorney, asked Kenneth how long Belinda would have been alone with David if she had left Kenneth’s house at 3:55 p.m. and gotten home at 4:10 p.m.
“Very few minutes, yes,” Kenneth Temple said.
The deposition also centered on previous gun purchases the father made for his three sons. Kenneth Temple said he had bought three shotguns, but couldn’t remember specifics.
He also said he became aware of problems in Belinda and David’s marriage just two days after the murder, when he learned of an affair David had been having with a coworker.
During testimony before a grand jury in 1999, months after the murder, Kenneth was asked whether he was aware of problems in the couple’s marriage. He said, “I was not, I am not,” according to the deposition. The grand jury did not indict David Temple that year.
Through three days of witness testimony, defense attorneys also sought to prove that authorities had tunnel vision in their investigation of David Temple. They pointed to a teenage neighbor who might have been bitter at Belinda for telling his parents he was skipping school, attorneys said, causing him to lose his driving privileges.
Prosecutors instead focused on problems in Belinda and David’s marriage, and worked to disprove any involvement by the teenager. They additionally tried to widen the time period that Belinda and David were home together on Jan. 11, 1999, before her murder.
Closing arguments are scheduled for Monday morning in state District Judge Kelli Johnson’s court. If convicted, David Temple faces up to life in prison.