Jun 10, 2008 12:36 pm US/Pacific
Daly City Man Fires Lawyer In Wife Murder Case
REDWOOD CITY (BCN) ―
A 33-year-old man convicted of first-degree murder for stabbing his wife in the bedroom of their Daly City home in 2006 fired his attorney Tuesday in San Mateo County Superior Court and will have new representation for any post-trial motions.
Quincy Dean Norton Sr., of Daly City, stood before Judge Craig Parsons Tuesday in an orange jail jumpsuit and asked that defense attorney Patricia Fox be removed from his case. Parsons granted the request and appointed the county's private defender program for any post-trial motions made on Quincy Norton's behalf.
The San Mateo County District Attorney's office expects Quincy Norton will be filing motions for a new trial.
The Daly City father was found guilty of first-degree murder, as well as the enhancement that he personally used a dangerous weapon, a knife, in the course of the murder. He was charged with killing his wife Tamika Norton, 31, on July 22, 2006.
Jurors spent six days deliberating before returning with the verdict.
Tamika Norton had decided she wanted a divorce and had filled out paperwork on July 12, 2006, the owner of a San Mateo divorce center testified during the trial. The divorce center mailed her the papers so she could serve them to Quincy Norton on July 16, a week before she was killed.
During the trial, the couple's children, Quincy Norton Jr., 11, and Dion, 9, testified that they heard their mother scream the morning she died, and that they heard banging coming from the master bedroom.
Quincy Norton testified that the boys heard the fight on the morning before Tamika Norton was killed. Quincy Norton told the court that he was at Anitra Johnson's house the night of July 21, and insinuated that Johnson took his keys at some point and left her Milpitas home for a few hours. He said he came home early that morning to find his wife's body on the bedroom floor.
Quincy Norton and Johnson had a long relationship and have a daughter together. Johnson and Tamika Norton disliked each other and apparently got into a physical altercation in 2003. Tamika Norton first said that her husband had assaulted her, but later recanted and said the fight was between the two women, according to the district attorney's office.
DNA evidence was found at the Norton's home that could have been Johnson's but Quincy Norton also could have transferred it there, according to forensic scientists who testified during the trial.
On the morning of the murder Quincy Norton collected his three children, then ages 7, 9 and 1, and drove them to a cousin's San Mateo house where he left them.
Quincy Norton evaded police more than a month while being sought for questioning following the fatal stabbing. Police arrested him in San Jose on Aug. 27, 2006, when the woman whose home he was staying at told him to leave. Police arrested him as he sat at a bus stop.
Quincy Norton remains in custody on a no-bail status and will return to court on July 28 to confirm his new attorney and set a date for further motions.
(© CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Bay City News contributed to this report.)
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