Capital murder trial of Nga Aung Lone

The trial date for Nga Lone Aung did not take place until March 2019. A tentative date of December 4, 2017 was set at one point but was reset.^[1]

The events leading up to the murder came primarily from the uncorroborated testimony of Aung himself.

The relationship between Aung and the victims

According to Aung, the killing of the husband and wife was the fruit of a soured romantic fixation.

During the investigation into the murders of Phonsavanh and Phetkeo Phetsavanh, they learned of Facebook messages between Phonesavanh (the wife) and Aung. The messages between the two indicated that there was a relationship between them.

Aung testified at trial that he and Phonsavanh had known each other since 2011 and were co-workers at an Amarillo restaurant. Soon after the two met, Phonsavanh expressed her romantic interest in Aung.

In his testimony, Aung maintained that he told Phonsavanh that a relationship would be impossible since she already had a husband and family. The two were able to have a friendship, he said.

According to Aung, Phonsavanh came to his apartment in 2013 and again expressed her love for him. He turned away her advances and told her to not return, he said.

This apparently was too much for Phonsavanh to handle and she began to take her frustration out on Aung through acts of vandalism.

Three separate reports filed with Amarillo Police by Aung detail the damages done to his car. The vandalism consisted of obscenities scratched into the paint of the car and the tires were slashed. Phonsavanh was named as the suspected responsible party in all three reports. Police did not present a case for prosecution because Aung failed to get a repair estimate for the damages.

The three incidents of vandalism took place in the month leading up to the murders.

The day of the murders

The morning of June 6, 2014, Aung and Phonsavanh engaged in a furious conversation on Facebook, exchanging threatening messages.

There was little dispute about the facts: that Aung testified to the act of shooting Phonsavanh and her husband around midnight June 7, 2014

Forensic evidence along with testimony from Aung showed that he jumped the back gate of the Phetsavanh home and shot the husband first as he sat on the patio. Then he entered the home and shot Phonsavanh several times.

Aung's defensive theory

The defense presented a theory to the jury that proposed that Aung went to the home to tell Petkeo about his wife's harassment of him.

His intent, Aung's defense lawyer said, was to tell the husband in hopes of putting a stop to the vandalism and harassment. Instead, he was attacked first by Petkeo and then by Phonsavanh, shooting both accidentally as they wrestled for the gun on each occasion.

Tactical language barrier

In a more tactical move, Aung's defense attorney was able to suppress his confession made to police in Liberal due to mistakes made by the translator.

In an attempt to expand on this, Aung's counsel argued that the entire interview should be thrown out of court because while the interpreter spoke Burmese, Aung's primary language was a distinct dialect that differed from Burmese. His argument was that Aung did not understand what the interpreter and police officers were saying to him.

In response, the court retained an interpreter from Oklahoma to transcribe an audio recording of Aung’s custodial interview by law enforcement officers.

The interpreter, through a telephone hearing at the trial, testified that in the interview, Aung spoke Burmese. Given that Aung conversed in Burmese, rather than his native dialect, the interpreter was certain he understood what he was asked when giving his statement. This finding was explicitly referenced in his later appeal.

Evidence presented at trial

Physical evidence at trial consisted of the items that police found in the initial investigation at the scene: a cigarette butt, and multiple shell casings, footprints, and tire tracks in the alley.

Through forensic testing and analysis, these pieces of evidence were later linked to Aung; the cigarette butt was found to match Aung's DNA, the shell casings matched the type of gun owned by Aung, the footprints matched a pair of shoes that were found outside the house and were the same size shoe worn by Aung at the time of his arrest. Finally, the tire tracks had the same measurement of the tire tracks of the car that the he was later found to be driving when arrested in Liberal, Kansas.

Further evidence gathered during the investigation was even more damning: the victims’ teenage daughter identified Aung as the person involved in a Facebook relationship with her mother; his admission to his roommate, Kyaw Kyaw, that he had killed the husband and wife just moments after committing the at; his flight from Amarillo and journey from Buffalo New York to Liberal, Kansas to avoid arrest.

The strongest piece of evidence, however, was likely Aung's admission of the killings to people visiting him in jail and in his trial testimony.

Conviction, sentencing, and appeal

Aung Nga Lone was convicted of capital murder by a jury on March 15, 2019.^[2] Because he was found guilty, he was automatically sentenced to life without parole in prison.

His appeal tried to levy several procedural errors that occured through the language barrier and warrantless searches.

But in an opinion published on March 5, 2020, the 7th Court of Appeals sided with the verdict of the trial court. In a three-page court filing, the panel of judges explained that Aung's conviction would stand because he had testified during the guilt/innocence phase of the trial. More specifically, he told the jury about how he shot the husband and wife but he also told them how he did it and why.