BECKLEY, W.Va. — A Raleigh County jury has convicted a former pharmacist of first degree murder in the 2019 death of her husband.
Natalie Cochran was found guilty after the jury deliberated for a little less than two hours on Wednesday. Cochran burst into tears when the verdict was read.
“The court accepts the jury verdict and finds this defendant guilty of murder in the first degree,” Special Judge H.L. Kirkpatrick said after reading the verdict.
The jury chose murder over involuntary manslaughter, a misdemeanor.
Cochran, who chose not to testify in the trial, is already serving 11 years in federal prison for the Ponzi Scheme that she was running out of the couple’s defense contracting business.
The jury agreed with prosecutors that Cochran, a former pharmacist, killed her husband Michael, 38, in 2019 using insulin. Prosecutors said she killed him after he started asking questions about the operation.
The jury will return Thursday for the mercy phase. Kirkpatrick had hoped to begin Wednesday afternoon but the defense said it needed time for witnesses to get to the courthouse.
“We have to get in touch with our other witnesses, it will take considerable time to do that. We have to make sure they can get here and we respectfully request to continue these proceedings,” defense attorney Stan Seldon told the judge.
Cochran’s son and daughter are expected to be among the witnesses.
Kirkpatrick told the jury the mercy phase would be a mini-trial.
“If she receives mercy she will be eligible for parole in 15 years. If she does not receive mercy she will spend the rest of her life in prison and that’s a decision that you must determine,” Kirkpatrick told the jury.
Cochran was urged by people who saw her husband when he fell ill in February 2019 to get medical help. Several witnesses said she believed her husband would “sleep it off.” He died five days later.
Prosecution expert witness Dr. Paul Uribe testified earlier in the trial that the death was caused by insulin injection.
“Given the entirety of the circumstances, including the initial autopsy findings, the second autopsy findings, which there weren’t much, the history of profound hypoglycemia. which is very much unexplained, I came to the conclusion that the cause of the death was exogenous insulin administration,” Uribe said.
He told the jury Michael Cochran’s death was by homicide.
Forensic Pathologist Ljubisa Dragovic, a defense expert witness, said Cochran’s death was both “undetermined and undeterminable.”
“I believe there are not effecting findings to substantiate Dr. Uribe’s determination,” Dragovic said.
Raleigh County Prosecutor Tom Truman told the jury again Tuesday during closing arguments that the state’s case was circumstantial but Natalie Cochran was the one who had the opportunity and the means to kill her husband and she did.
“We do know that Michael Cochran’s death was caused by insulin and reducing his blood sugar to a fatal level and changes in his brain killed that man,” Truman said.