DeKalb deputy Derrick Yancey who killed wife wants new trial

A judge could decide next month if a former DeKalb County deputy sheriff convicted of killing his wife and a day laborer will get a new trial.

Police charged Derrick Yancey with the 2008 murders of his wife, Deputy Linda Yancey, and day laborer Marcial Cax-Puluc. A jury convicted Yancey in 2010 and a judge sentenced him to two life sentences.

Yancey claimed Cax-Puluc, a Guatemalan national he hired for work that day, murdered his wife and he was forced to shoot him in self-defense. Experts testified that the evidence, in part the blood spatter evidence, showed that could not have happened and that Yancey was the shooter.

Yancey now claims his former attoeys did not do an adequate job defending him. His new attoey, Ashleigh Merchant, wanted to put her own expert on the stand at a Tuesday moing hearing to refute that blood spatter evidence.

Yancey's original attoeys, Leticia Delan and Ruth McMullin testified Tuesday that they had hired their own blood spatter expert to examine the evidence, but after he agreed with the prosecution expert's opinion, they decided not to put him on the stand.

"You chose not to call him to the stand because his conclusions were not helpful to you?" asked prosecutor Lee Grant.

"Correct," Delan answered. "Because he said, you don't want me. 'You don't want to call me. I will hurt (your case).'"

Judge Linda Hunter ruled that the original lawyers made no errors and refused to allow Merchant to put her new expert on the stand. She will rule on the new trial motion sometime in May.

Meanwhile, Yancey remains in the DeKalb County Jail.