TRUMBULL COUNTY MURDER TRIAL Roberts makes opening statement

The prosecutor says the defendant stood to get a big insurance settlement.
By PEGGY SINKOVICH
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- The "real" Donna Roberts has a little bit of lawyer in her.
In a surprise move Tuesday, she made her own opening statement in her capital murder trial.
"Will the real Donna Roberts, please stand up," Roberts told the jury of nine women and three men. "The real Donna Roberts stands before you and the testimony and evidence will establish that I played no part in Robert's death. The Donna Roberts you'll hear portrayed in the letters and on the tapes is not the real Donna Roberts."
Attys. J. Gerald Ingram and John Juhasz declined to say why their client made the statement.
"It is unusual," Ingram said.
Chris Becker, an assistant county prosecutor, said it was the second time in his 13 years of practice he watched a defendant make an opening argument.
Roberts, who could face the death penalty if she is convicted of aggravated murder, aggravated robbery and aggravated burglary, also advised jurors to listen to the questions her attorneys ask witnesses.
"I'm not guilty and you'll know that when this case is over," Roberts said.
Prosecutor's comments
Her statement was made moments after Chris Becker, an assistant Trumbull County prosecutor, told jurors that Roberts and her lover, Nathaniel Jackson, conspired to kill her estranged husband, Robert Fingerhut.
"The motive was greed," Becker told the jury, noting Roberts stood to collect $550,000 in life insurance.
"She had two policies out on her husband," Becker said. "She planned to buy her lover a new car."
Roberts, 57, and Jackson, 29, wrote hundreds of letters to each other, some discussing their plans to kill Fingerhut when Jackson was released from prison, authorities say.
Becker also told the jury Roberts hated Fingerhut and often stated that in her letters to Jackson.
While Becker read portions of the letters to the jury, Roberts sat at the defense table, with her head in her hands and sobbed.
Roberts and Jackson were accused of killing Fingerhut on Dec. 11, 2001, in the Fonderlac Drive Southeast home Roberts and Fingerhut shared, just two days after Jackson was released from prison after serving one year on a Mahoning County conviction for receiving stolen property.
On much of the same evidence pending in this trial, Jackson was convicted of aggravated murder, aggravated robbery and aggravated burglary in the Fingerhut case and has been sentenced to death.
He is appealing.
sinkovich@vindy.com