The guilty verdict against Anthony Dale Crawford, 49, of Manassas was overturned on Tuesday, December 23 by the Virginia Court of Appeals.
Crawford was convicted in February 2007 of killing his wife, 33-year-old Sarah Louise Crawford, in 2004.
The Daily Progress reports today that the decision reversed all of Crawford’s convictions in the Charlottesville Circuit Court except for one: grand larceny.
The decision resulted from a technicality. The Appeals Court opinion argued that, because the Commonwealth’s Attorney presented as evidence an affidavit sworn by Sarah Crawford as part of a restraining order against her husband, the court violated the defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights. The Confrontation Clause gives defendants the right to face their accusers.
In 2007, Crawford was sentenced to two life prison terms and an added 67 years for murder, abduction with the intent to defile, rape, grand larceny and use of a firearm. Crawford shot his estranged wife, raped her and left her body in a Charlottesville hotel room.
A history of violence: Anthony Dale Crawford, whose Charlottesville murder conviction was overturned this week, somehow avoided a rape conviction in South Carolina even after a videotape surfaced of him having sex with his first wife while she was hog-tied and her mouth was duct-taped.