Fresno man, 69, convicted of murder

via CAAI News Media

Wednesday, Mar. 10, 2010

By Pablo Lopez / The Fresno Bee

A jury Wednesday found a 69-year-old Fresno man guilty of first-degree murder in the stabbing death of his wife in October 2008.

Pech Sok showed no emotion in Fresno County Superior Court when the verdict was announced. He scanned the courtroom for familiar faces, but found none.

The jury deliberated two hours after hearing two days of testimony.

During the trial, prosecutor Jeff Dupras said Sok had confessed to police that he planned to kill his wife, Bouen Say, 61, because she had left him.

After Sok stabbed her to death inside her family's home on the 400 block of South Woodrow Avenue on Oct. 1, 2008, he tried to kill himself, but her relatives stopped him, Dupras said.

Attorney Manuel Nieto, who represented Sok, however, asked the jury to come back with a lesser charge of manslaughter, saying the killing wasn't planned, but done in a heat of passion.

After the verdict, Nieto explained his theory of the case.

"He's an old man, at the end of his life, and he's been abandoned," Nieto said. "This was not a cold-blooded murder. It was a stupid, emotional response."

Outside court, Dupras and Nieto agreed that Sok has lived a tragic life.

An uneducated refugee who knows little English, Sok was tortured in Cambodia during the Pol Pot regime, and his first wife died there, the lawyers said.

He hasn't fared much better in Fresno. In August 1998, Sok's second wife, Eng Ath, and two of the couple's children, Sophan and Sopheap, drowned in the San Joaquin River while fishing.

Now, he's convicted of killing his third wife. The couple had been married only a few months before she left him and returned to her family's home.

Dupras said anger prompted Sok to kill his wife. "He was embarrassed in the Cambodian community because she was not living with him," Dupras said.

But Nieto said Sok could no longer deal with so much loss. "He lost two wives and two children. His other children left him to live their own lives. When his wife left, it was too much for him."

Sok faces 26 years to life in prison when he is sentenced April 15.