FORT WORTH -- Jurors will be able to hear about confessions to murder made during a group therapy session in the mid-1980s by the man accused in the 1984 stabbing death of his 18-year-old neighbor.
State District Judge Everett Young ruled Monday that he will allow testimony about admissions made by Ryland Shane Absalon, now 45, while Absalon was enrolled in alcohol- and substance-abuse treatment at the now-closed Straight Inc. program in Richardson.Absalon is standing trial on capital murder charges in the 1984 death of Ginger Hayden, who had started classes at the University of Texas at Arlington just days earlier and was a former schoolmate of Absalon's at Arlington Heights High School in Fort Worth.The case languished unsolved for decades until the Fort Worth Police Department's cold case unit found DNA evidence linking Absalon to the crime. Absalon was 17 at the time of the killing and was a friend of Hayden's boyfriend.Absalon told participants of the Straight program that "he had killed a girl, that he had stabbed a girl" while enrolled in the program, two former participants told the judge Friday during a hearing on whether the jury would hear testimony about the confessions.Defense attorneys Gary Udashen and Katherine Borras of Dallas had asked Young not to allow jurors to hear evidence of the confessions. They suggested that Absalon had felt so pressured under the harsh program that he falsely admitted to the killing and believed he would be protected by the confidentiality that staff members had promised him.Prosecutor Lisa Callaghan, joined by Jim Hudson and Anna Summersett in trying the case, argued that such confessions had been held to be admissible in similar cases and under the rules of evidence for criminal proceedings in Texas.The rules specify that communications made during alcohol- or drug-abuse treatment are not admissible if the patient was being treated voluntarily. Prosecutors argued that Absalon was not participating voluntarily because completion of the program was a condition of his probation on an unrelated criminal mischief case.Similar confessions were allowed in the high-profile case of Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel, who was convicted in the 1975 bludgeoning of his 15-year-old neighbor, Martha Moxley, in Connecticut. Skakel's admissions during therapy were among the evidence used to convict him in 2002.In the Hayden case, the judge denied prosecution attempts to use an audio recording of police interrogating Absalon about the case, however. Prosecutors had hoped to include testimony from Detective Thomas O'Brien that Absalon nodded repeatedly during questioning but never verbally acknowledged the crime.Defense attorneys argued that the detective's conclusions were speculative and that Absalon was simply upholding his right to remain silent.Testimony is set to begin in the trial this morning. Jury selection was continuing late Monday afternoon, with five potential jurors excluded because of their knowledge of news reports about the case.If convicted, Absalon faces life in prison, but he would be eligible for parole because that was the law in 1984, when Hayden died.Staff writer Deanna Boyd contributed to this report.Dianna Hunt, 817-390-7084Twitter: @DiannaHuntHave more to add? News tip? Tell us
