Ohio doctor gets 20 years to life for wife’s poisoning

March 10, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

CLEVELAND

Relatives of the victim sobbed and held one another as a judge handed down a life prison term Tuesday for a doctor convicted of killing his wife by lacing her calcium supplement with cyanide so he could be with his mistress.

Yazeed Essa, 41, won’t be eligible for parole for at least 20 years.

Essa, who didn’t testify at his trial, softly said “yes” when Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Deena Calabrese asked if he wanted to pass up a chance to comment at his sentencing.

But relatives of the victims spoke up, staring him down in an emotionally charged courtroom and challenging him to own up to the slaying.

“Are you a man,” asked the victim’s brother, Dominic DiPuccio. “It’s your last chance to save your soul, right here, right now.”

Essa was convicted last week of lacing his wife’s calcium supplement with cyanide in 2005. Rosemarie Essa collapsed while driving and crashed her car into another vehicle near the couple’s suburban Cleveland home.

Essa, dressed in an orange jail suit and with his hands cuffed in front of him, pushed back in his chair and mostly looked straight ahead as the parents, siblings and friends of his wife spoke to the judge before the sentence was imposed.