February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Patrick Markey
A jury has ruled that a Dublin man convicted of fatally stabbing his wife in their California home last year was sane at the time he committed the murder.
The Santa Clara jury deliberated for just a day before deciding that Colman Bowers, a former Silicon Valley computer executive, was aware of his actions when he plunged a kitchen knife into his wife’s chest, state officials said.
The decision comes after three days of expert testimony from psychiatrists. Bowers’s defense attorney had tried to prove that the Dubliner had suffered from a mental breakdown when he killed his wife, Georgina, as the couple’s young daughter slept in another room.
Bowers now faces from 20 years to life in prison when he is sentenced on Aug. 25, said Santa Clara Police spokesman Anton Morec. If he had been found insane, Bowers could have been committed to a state facility for the criminally insane.
Bowers was arrested on Feb. 7 1999 after police were called to his Santa Clara home. The Irishman had called his two teenage sons on their mobile phone to tell them they had been an accident at home. The two boys returned to find their mother’s naked body in the bedroom with a stab wound to the chest.
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During the trial prosecutors revealed that Bowers had become involved with a Las Vegas prostitute and had run up tens of thousands of dollars in debt keeping her in an apartment and gambling in the casino resort town.
Just before she was killed, Georgina Bowers had indicated she considering returning to Ireland because of the family disputes over finances and her husband’s involvement with other women.