No new trial for Marni Yang, serving life sentence for murder of former Bear Shaun Gayle's girlfriend
A new trial was denied Monday for Marni Yang, who is serving life in prison for a 2007 shooting that left a romantic rival dead.
Yang is serving a double life sentence for the shooting death of Rhoni Reuter and her unborn child in 2007. Reuter was found dead in her Deerfield condo that October of that year.
At the time, Reuter was the girlfriend of Shaun Gayle, a former Chicago Bears defensive back who played on the Super Bowl champion 1985 team. Prosecutors said Yang and Gayle were also romantically involved, and she was jealous of Reuter.
Yang was convicted in 2011, and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Prosecutors said Yang became obsessed with Gayle upon meeting him at a 20th anniversary Super Bowl party in 2005, and soon became Gayle's real estate agent and an occasional sex partner.
Prosecutors said Yang decided to kill Reuter when learning that Reuter was pregnant with Gayle's child. Gayle admitted on the witness stand in court that he engaged in sex with Yang the night before the murder.
During her trial, prosecutors played a recording of Yang confessing to Reuter's murder to a friend who was wearing a wire.
Yang's attorneys have claimed in court that Yang could not have been the shooter because she is too short. Yang's attorneys have also claimed her confession came as their client tried to protect others from being arrested, and that they ignored evidence showing she was innocent.
The evidence the defense introduced included claims from a forensic scientist that Yang's DNA was not on the live rounds recovered from the scene of the shooting that killed Reuter, while unidentified male DNA was. The defense also said a friend of Yang's son at the time of the murders told police he stole a gun from Yang.
But Lake County Judge Christopher Stride ruled that none of the defense's claims of Yang's innocence are sufficient to overcome the evidence that Yang was guilty.
"In the end, none of Defendant's evidence overcomes Defendant's own recorded voice, talking to her friend at a local diner, describing how she murdered Rhoni Reuter and Reuter's unborn child," the judge wrote.
