Jury 'sends message' to county man convicted of beating wife
Jan. 30—A Moore man convicted of nearly beating his wife to death over an alleged affair will likely spend the rest of his life in prison.
Cleveland County jurors found Don Leslie King, 68, guilty of assault and battery by means likely to produce death.
The panel recommended life in prison as punishment.
They acquitted King on two additional counts: domestic assault, battery or assault and battery with a dangerous weapon; and domestic assault and battery by strangulation.
The jury deliberated for 90 minutes Thursday before deciding King's fate in the courtroom of District Judge Thad Balkman.
The foreman told prosecutors the jury wanted to send a message "that this kind of conduct is unacceptable."
King will be formally sentenced in March.
Officers found Glenda King unresponsive when they arrived at a residence in the 13000 block of Doe Lane on Sept. 7, 2021.
She was transported to University of Oklahoma Medical Center with life-threatening head injuries and underwent surgery.
Don King told police he lost his temper and hit his wife of 35 years because she admitted to having sex with King's father in 2010.
At the defendant's preliminary hearing in February 2022, Glenda King told a judge her husband punched her in the face multiple times, kicked her in the head while wearing work boots and "choked me out."
"I begged him to stop," she said. "I couldn't believe that we'd been married 35 years and he did me that way."
Glenda King testified the beating went on for hours.
At one point, she said her husband produced a gun and beat her on the forehead with "the butt" multiple times.
