Prosecution rests in March case
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The prosecution in the trial of Perry March rested Tuesday morning. March is charged with second-degree murder in the death of Janet Levine March. She disappeared in August 1996 and was declared legally dead in 2004 although her body has never been found.
The defense announced Tuesday it would present about half a dozen witnesses, and later played a taped media interview with March’s son Samson.
In the interview, Samson describes the last time he saw his mother.
“I waved to her and she waved to me when she left,” he said in the interview, according to a report from The Tennessean.
“She told me that she’d be back soon. She came in and gave me my goodnight kiss. She took her bags and went downstairs and got in the car and drove away.”
With the jury removed from the courtroom, March took the stand Tuesday afternoon but declined to testify.
Four or five deputies who were responsible for monitoring jail inmates and were prosecution witnesses also will testify for March, the defense said.
Davidson County Criminal Court Judge Steve Dozier denied a defense motion for a verdict of acquittal, which the defense filed claiming the trial wasn’t being conducted in a proper venue.
Because of the prominence of the March couple, and the mystery surrounding what happened to the wife, the trial has drawn intense interest in Nashville. Janet March was active in the arts community and her father is a well-known lawyer.
Perry March was identified as a suspect in 1996 and soon after moved to Mexico. He wasn’t arrested in the case until August 2005.
This year he was convicted of stealing from his former law firm and of plotting with an inmate in Nashville to have his wife’s parents killed.
Among those who have testified against him are his father, Arthur March, who also lived in Ajijic, Mexico, until he was arrested this year in connection with the plot against the parents and pleaded guilty to federal charges in the case.