Woman sentenced in Sacramento for arranged murder of husband

By Andy Furillo - The Sacramento Bee

June 15, 2013

Shajia Ayobi apologized to her four teenage children Friday for the murder of their father, but she suggested she did what she did on their behalf, sort of as a pre-emptive strike.

"Through all these years, I never imagined we would see this kind of day," Ayobi said, just before she received her 26-years-to-life sentence in the Dec. 18, 2011, shooting death of her husband, Ghulam Ayobi.

"I always thought it would be the opposite," she said. "I thought we'd come home and my kids would be in a pool of blood. That was my nightmare for 24 hours a day."

There was evidence in Ayobi's trial that her husband had exhibited abusive behavior toward the children. But she based her trial defense on her own allegations that it was she who suffered a torrent of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of her husband, almost from the time of their 1993 arranged marriage.

She said it was she who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, first from a domineering father in her native Afghanistan, then from what she saw during the Soviet invasion of her homeland in the early 1980s. A first arranged marriage produced its share of domestic abuse, even before what she said she endured in her relationship with Ghulam Ayobi, another war emigre from Afghanistan. She said he flew into rages and would drag her by the hair and pour toilet water over her head.

The PTSD defense was the third offered by Ayobi, 47, in the killing of her husband. At first, she lied to police, telling them carjackers shot and killed Ghulam, 53, while they were driving on Interstate 80 near Northgate Boulevard, on their way home to Foothill Farms from a dinner party in North Natomas.

When police found some problems in her account, she made up another story – that the CIA put a hit out on her husband, who worked as a cultural sensitivity consultant for the U.S. military.

It turned out, jurors decided in their verdict, that she arranged the murder herself. Prosecutors have since charged a gas station attendant she knew from her criminal justice class at Kaplan College with participating in the killing. They say she hired him to hide in the family van and to shoot and kill Ghulam on the drive home from Natomas.

The alleged accomplice, Jake Clark, 20, has been arrested and charged with murder. He is set for his next Sacramento Superior Court date on Tuesday.

In her remarks Friday at her sentencing, Shajia Ayobi, who had gone back to Afghanistan in 2007 or 2008 to work for a brief while as a linguist, said she loved her husband "deeply." She said she showed it by never turning him in to the police for abusing her.

Mostly, she spoke about her children. The couple had three girls and a boy, ages 13 through 18, according to her probation report. She said, "They have always been my priority, no matter what."

She said, "I stayed on top of my kids and made sure they did well in school" and that they attended Muslim services.

"I was that kind of mother," Ayobi told the court. "When they came home, the food was ready. It was warm, their clothes clean. Everything. Their doctor, everything was up to date."

Ayobi said "I repent every day of my life" for the killing, but that "no matter where I am my kids will be my priority. I will check on them on an everyday basis. … I'm never going to leave their sight. If I'm not there physically, emotionally I'm going to be there with them."

All four of the children wrote letters to the court in support of their mother. One of them asked, "I'm just hoping you will send my mother to a good prison that will treat her with care." The youngest daughter said "she was depressed when Father died."

Another daughter wrote, "I still believe my parents were good people and that they had just been through a lot."

Ferishta Kulaly, a niece on Ghulam Ayobi's side of the family, read a statement that her uncle "loved life and shared his passion for life with others." Kulaly said, "If Shajia truly believed her life with her husband was so bad, she could have found another way to get out of this marriage. Divorce was an option."

Deputy District Attorney Kevin Greene argued at trial that Shajia killed Ghulam mainly to get out of the marriage without having to go through the cultural stigma of a second divorce. Greene also said she had a financial motive: She stood to collect $285,000 on an insurance policy.

Judge Helena R. Gweon called the case "tragic and unusual."

"Both Ghulam and Shajia were complex people," the judge said from the bench. "They were well educated, intelligent, hard-working and flawed – deeply flawed. They both had their demons and they both had experienced atrocities."

Gweon said Ghulam Ayobi "did many good things," and although "he was not a perfect man … he did not deserve to be killed.

Sacramento jury convicts wife of first-degree murder

By Andy Furillo - The Sacramento Bee

Thursday, May. 2, 2013

For nearly four days, Shajia Ayobi's jury struggled with the meaning of "imminence" and whether it applied to the danger she said she feared from her husband.

Wednesday afternoon, the panel decided that even if she had been battered and abused by Ghulam Rabani Ayobi, as she testified, he did not present an immediate threat to her the night she either killed him or had him killed.

As a result, they convicted Ayobi, 46, of first-degree murder in the Dec. 18, 2011, shooting death of her husband, who was 53.

"There was a lot of talk about definitions," juror Reg Orbeta told reporters afterward.

Twice, the jury sent notes to Sacramento Superior Court Judge Helena R. Gweon to ask for a further meaning to the word "imminent." Twice, the judge told them to apply their ordinary, everyday understanding.

Then, to the delight of Ghulam Ayobi's side of the family, the jury worked its way through the law and arrived at the conclusion that there was no clear and present danger to Shajia Ayobi when her husband was shot in their car while he laid his head back in rest.

"This is just one of the judgments," Ghulam Ayobi's niece, Ferishta Kulaly, said of the jury's verdict. "We believe that there is another judgment coming up, and hopefully it will be more severe than this one."

The next judgment, Kulaly said, will be rendered "when she exits this world, in her next life … She has to face (God), too, and explain to him what she did to herself, her family, the kids, the mom, the community – for selfish reasons."

Gweon scheduled for June 14 her application of the worldly consequences for the murder conviction. Ayobi is facing a term of 25 years to life in prison.

Although the jury found Ayobi guilty of murder, it did not have enough evidence to conclude that she pulled the trigger in her husband's killing.

Deputy District Attorney Kevin Greene argued that she was in fact the shooter. His office, however, also has charged a second defendant in the case, a criminal justice classmate of Ayobi's at Kaplan College identified as Jake Clark, 30.

In a jailhouse interview, Clark said Ayobi offered him $500 to kill her husband. He said he refused the offer and "flat-out" had nothing to do with the killing. Clark has yet to enter a plea. His next court date is scheduled for May 17.

On Tuesday, the jury declared itself at an impasse in its deliberations, but Gweon ordered the members of the panel to resume their discussions. The jurors reached their verdict about 2:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Orbeta said the panel had been split 10-2 in favor of conviction when the judge ordered jurors back into the deliberation room.

Jury foreman Matthew Smalley said it was "careful deliberation of the facts" that produced the eventual unanimous decision.

Asked what evidence was most decisive, Smalley said, "the testimony of the defendant."

Ayobi spent two days on the stand, and although the panel mostly found her lacking in credibility, Smalley said her admission that she contracted out the killing of her husband severely damaged her cause.

Smalley said "we felt there was compelling evidence" to corroborate Ayobi's testimony that she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Ayobi testified it resulted from her early childhood experiences, from living in Afghanistan during the Soviet war of the early 1980s and from the domestic abuse she suffered at the hands of the husband she murdered.

"The PTSD was certainly a factor," Smalley said. "But we weren't able to conclude it was the overriding factor."

Greene, the prosecutor, said in his closing arguments that Ayobi stood to collect on a $285,000 life insurance policy if her husband died. The deputy DA also said she had other motives to murder, that she stood to gain her freedom from a bad marriage without having to endure the cultural stigma of divorce.

Shajia Ayobi first reported to police she and her husband were carjacked coming home from a dinner party in Natomas and that Ghulam Ayobi was shot and killed by the robber who had hidden in the back seat of their car.

She later changed her story to say the CIA had her husband killed, before she finally admitted that she did it – but under the duress of PTSD.

Greene declined to comment on the verdict.

Defense attorney Pete Kmeto argued for an acquittal on the basis of self-defense. Short of that, he said jurors also had the option of convicting her of voluntary manslaughter under a theory of imperfect self-defense.

"Obviously we're disappointed," Kmeto said in an interview after the verdict. "What this woman went through in her life, and the domestic violence that occurred – all your sympathies go to her."

Kmeto said jurors told him that the level of planning that went into the killing made it impossible for them to find that she acted out of a fear of imminent harm.

"They struggled mightily," Kmeto said of the jury. "It was a very emotional thing for them. They couldn't go to sleep. They stayed up all night. They became tearful in their deliberations. I'm convinced these people did the best they could given the facts and the law."