Another sentence for Isleworth’s Ward
Former Isleworth millionaire James “Bob” Ward, right, leaves an Orange County courtroom Thursday after being sentenced to 30 years in prison for a manslaughter conviction in the 2009 death of his wife, Diane. The judge also ordered Ward to reimburse the state more than $500,000.
Before a judge sentenced former Isleworth millionaire James “Bob” Ward to 30 years in prison for manslaughter in his wife’s killing, their daughter Sarah Ward stepped up to a courtroom podium and asked the judge to set her father free.
Diane Ward would not have wanted her husband to remain behind bars, Sarah Ward said.
“I promise you that the life we have now is not what she wanted when she asked us to take care of our dad,” she said. “… My dad has paid a debt that he does not owe, six years in prison.”
Bob Ward, 70, asked the judge to “have mercy on me.”
“What I’m asking from you is please make this right. Please. I’m a good person, I didn’t do this,” he said.
He also complained of what he said were inaccuracies in the prosecutors’ closing arguments.
“You’ve got a six-person jury,” Bob Ward said. “I mean, everybody thinks the system is fair. It’s not.”
Circuit Judge Leticia Marques also ordered him to reimburse the state for the cost of the incarceration, ruling that he pay $50 a day in restitution — for a total of $547,500, excluding leap days. He will get credit for the six years he already spent in prison.
This is Ward’s second sentencing in Diane Ward’s 2009 killing. He was convicted of second-degree murder in 2011 and sent to prison before a judge overturned the guilty verdict because his attorney in the first trial, Kirk Kirkconnell, did not properly object to evidence pertaining to his right to remain silent. Kirkconnell died in 2012.
Ward’s second jury opted not to convict him of second-degree murder, but found him guilty of the lesser-included offense of manslaughter with a firearm.
A few things have changed in the case since a jury convicted Ward of manslaughter in February: One of the prosecutors, Mark Interlicchio, resigned from his position as assistant state attorney amid an investigation into his communication with one of Ward’s adult daughters, Mallory Ward, after the verdict.
Ward’s family also presented what they believe is a suicide note Diane Ward wrote. A person preparing the family’s Atlanta home for sale found the undated note, addressed to his two daughters.
Ward’s attorney, Sean Ellsworth, said the note bolsters her husband’s claim that Diane Ward was attempting suicide
on the night of her death and approached Bob Ward with a gun in her hands, prompting the struggle that ended with her shooting.
It also offers proof that Diane Ward was “unstable, in a highly volatile mental and emotional state, and thinking and acting in an erratic and life-threatening manner,” the attorney said.
The note reads: “Dear Mallory & Sarah, Please know how much I love you — I don’t know how it happened for me to end up like this. I want you to have wonderful lives + know that I will always be watching out for you both. Take care of Daddy. I love you more than you will ever know. Take care of the dogs. They will need you.”
The remaining prosecutor on the case, Assistant State Attorney Will Jay, pointed out that there is no proof of when the note was written and questioned how it was found nine years after her death.
Sarah Ward said reading the note was like hearing from her mother for the first time since her death.
“It took two trials, my dad spending six years in prison — and possibly more now — for me to stop blaming her and to see the pain that she must have been feeling toward the end of her life,” she said.