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Sunday, January 25, 1998

After winning acquittal, Mowbray family plans to go on with life

By PAULINE ARRILLAGA / Associated Press Writer

BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) -- For 10 years, Susie Mowbray was either in prison or fighting to stay out. Now she has begun living a life of freedom after being acquitted on charges of killing her husband.

"We're going to do life without prison, without courts, without attorneys -- without that big black cloud over us," Mrs. Mowbray said after being found innocent Friday at her retrial in the 1987 death of her husband.

"We're going to do it like normal people."

Mrs. Mowbray spent nine years in prison after being convicted in 1988 of killing Brownsville Cadillac dealer Bill Mowbray for $1.8 million in insurance money.

She was released last year after an appeals court granted her a new trial, ruling prosecutors had suppressed blood evidence that could have supported her argument that Mowbray killed himself.

On Friday, after a two-week trial and two days of deliberations, a jury found Mrs. Mowbray innocent, saying prosecutors failed to prove their case because of the "improper handling" of evidence by local law enforcement officials.

At a victory party following her acquittal, Mrs. Mowbray and her family discussed their plans for the future -- plans they had avoided making over the past decade.

"We have choices now," Mrs. Mowbray said as she sipped champagne on the back porch of a friend's house. "We haven't had choices for all these years, and now we do. I don't even know what all those choices are."

The immediate future includes making the rounds of the talk show circuit. Even as she celebrated, Mrs. Mowbray and her daughter, Cricket Burnett, were arranging a trip to New York to appear on the "Today" show.

After that, Mrs. Mowbray intends to return to Dallas, where she has been living with her daughter since being released from prison last year.

"We'll probably take it one day at a time," she said, adding that she has no specific plans. "After all I've been through, I sincerely feel like I will make the best decisions that are right for me."

Mrs. Mowbray's son, Wade Burnett, said he doesn't know what the future holds for him or his family.

"I haven't been an adult and not had to deal with this. So I can't say I know what it's going to be like," said Burnett, who was 16 when his mother was convicted of killing his stepfather.

Burnett, a law student who dug up the evidence that led to his mother's new trial, said he will return to law school at Louisiana State University.

"I haven't even bought books this semester," said Burnett, who missed the first three weeks of the semester to attend his mother's trial, at which he served as the defense team's lead investigator.

Although he is scheduled to graduate this summer, Burnett said he doesn't know whether he will ever practice law after living through his mother's legal nightmare.

"Right now, I don't want to go into another courtroom, but I don't want to make a decision for my future based on how I feel today," he said. "I've always said that once this is over, I'll sit down and decide what's next."

But Burnett said one thing is for certain: "Everything's downhill after this."