Freed woman is ordered back to prison -- for life

March 20, 2004





BY DAVID ASHENFELTER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER




An Oakland County woman who was freed from prison in 1999 after serving 10 years of a life sentence for conspiring with her sons to try to kill her husband must finish the sentence, the Michigan Attorney General's Office said Friday.

It said Sharon Rockwell, 53, formerly of Oxford, must report soon to Robert Scott Correctional Facility in Northville Township to complete her term, the result of the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal this month to review her case.

"She's known about it for a couple of days and she's taking it very hard," her lawyer, Craig Daly of Detroit, said Friday. He said Rockwell might appeal her conviction on other grounds, but for now, she must return to prison.

Rockwell, who remarried after her release and worked as a dental technician and served as a school and church volunteer, was convicted by an Oakland County Circuit Court jury in 1989 of conspiring to kill Edward Rockwell, then 37, a plant foreman in Pontiac.

One of their three sons, acting with two friends, initially tried to kill Edward Rockwell by cutting the brake lines of his car. When that failed, the two friends hit him in the head with a baseball bat as he watched television. He suffered a concussion and cuts but was released from the hospital.

Although Sharon Rockwell wasn't present during either attempt, she had discussed killing the man with her sons. She said she participated in the discussions so her sons could vent their hatred for their father for his alleged sexual and physical assaults on them when they were younger. She said her conversations were designed to prevent them from killing him.

But the Oakland County Prosecutor's Office, bolstered by witnesses, said she wanted to kill her husband to collect on an $80,000 insurance policy.

It said they discussed other plots, including injecting him with drain cleaner and clubbing him, putting him in a bathtub and then throwing a plugged-in toaster into the tub to make it look like an accidental electrocution.

A jury convicted Sharon Rockwell, her son and the two friends in the case. Sharon Rockwell and her son received life sentences.

The Michigan Court of Appeals upheld her conviction and the state Supreme Court declined to review it. In March 1999, U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn ordered her freed, saying excluding evidence of the alleged child abuse prevented her from receiving a fair trial.

The state appealed to the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, which overturned Cohn in three decisions.

On March 8, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

Daly said the case is heartbreaking, given the close votes on a number of the appeals and the minor injuries her husband sustained.

"They took him to the hospital, gave him a few stitches and he was released within hours," Daly said.

Contact DAVID ASHENFELTER at 313-223-4490 or ashenf@freepress.com.

LOL, I know I always toast my bread in the bathroom - what a murder plan!. That guy is lucky to be alive....

Wow,very interesting story.Thanks for sharing.I just wondering,shouldn't that guy be in jail too for sexual assaulting his son ?

OMG bigdog, no doubt--what was that about!!! oh nooo, that wouldn't be conspicuous at all now would it????