Aryan Grover
Nathan Jude Yager’s conviction has been upheld by the Colorado Court of Appeals, the second conviction for the same crime. Initially convicted of second-degree murder of his wife a decade ago, Yager’s conviction was reversed in 2016 when the trial court could not consider his temporary insanity defence plea.
At the time, the state of Colorado did not accept such a defence, but the opportunity of a fresh trial was granted to Yager after the Colorado Supreme Court held in a ruling that mental defects or conditions underlying insanity can be temporary if used in a plea by defendants.
Therefore, when Yager submitted a similar plea in his second conviction over the murder of his wife, where he slit her throat in a fit of rage, the jury rejected it and convicted him of second-degree murder and sentenced him to 42 years in prison.
In the appeal to the second conviction, Yager and his attorney contended that Delta County District Judge Steven Schultz erred in his judgement when he disregarded the evidence that showed that Yager’s actions had been provoked by his wife. However, a three-judge panel of the appellate court upheld Schultz’s ruling as it was supposedly irrelevant to the case at hand.
The murder took place soon after a contentious divorce and were fighting for the custody of their daughter. Yager has been held in the Limon Correctional Facility and his next parole hearing is in July 2039.
