Jury deliberates Donlon’s fate

PALMER — Among the many things he told and showed the jury Thursday, one sentence on a slide in Palmer District Attorney Roman Kalytiak’s PowerPoint presentation seemed to sum up his view of Lisa Donlon: She “chose a .45 instead of the police or a divorce lawyer.”

Donlon’s trial ended Thursday after occupying most of the month of March in Superior Court Judge Kari Kristiansen’s courtroom. She is accused murder for shooting her husband Jason Donlon while he lay in bed in their Butte-area cabin.

“Trials don’t have to be this long,” Kalytiak told the jury. “A trial can be in a matter of seconds because the evidence has shown here that a trial was conducted on Oct. 7, 2010.”

He said Lisa Donlon weighed the evidence, found her husband guilty and imposed the death penalty in “a matter of minutes, if not seconds.”

But she didn’t have to, Kalytiak argued. When she managed to lock her husband out of the family vehicle she could have driven to the police station. With the kids away at school on the days she said her husband tortured her, she could have called the police, had them pick the kids up so she knew they were safe. She could have gotten a divorce, or gone to live with friends out of state.

Instead, she shot Jason Donlon five times, including what Kalytiak called a “coup de grace” shot behind the ear. That sent a message, he said.

“I don’t want this person to ever recover from anything. I want this person gone. Period. Exclamation point,” Kalytiak said of the shooting.

But he wasn’t the only one making arguments Thursday. Zachary Renfro, one of Donlon’s attorneys, argued her side.

“Anyone, I think, would have done what Lisa Donlon did and should have done to protect herself and her children,” Renfro said. “Lisa Donlon was kept in a 12-by-12 cabin against her will by threat of death to her (and) to her children.”

He said the trial wasn’t about money — despite what Kalytiak implied, Lisa Donlon didn’t even know about her husband’s $400,000 insurance policy — nor was it about an affair she said she’d had with a co-worker.

And it wasn’t, Renfro said, a matter of Donlon arguing — as Kalytiak implied — that “the son-of-a-bitch deserved what he had coming.”

“Whether or not I believe that, I’m not allowed to argue that to a jury and you’re not allowed to consider it in your deliberations,” Renfro said.

No, what the case was about, he argued, was an imminent threat. The night before he was killed — after three days of torturing his wife over that affair — Renfro said Jason Donlon stayed up late.

“All night long he’s saying, ‘tomorrow’s the day. You’re going to pay. You have to pay for what you’ve done,’” Renfro said.

She believed he was going to kill her, but even so she held out hope, hatching a plan to keep their three kids home and maybe defuse the situation. She turned off the alarm clocks in the cabin. But then Jason Donlon woke up anyway, got their oldest off to middle school. And that’s when she knew.

“She knew he is going to do what he said he’s going to do,” Renfro said.

As of press time Thursday afternoon, the jury had received its instructions. And deliberations are expected to begin today.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.