Missouri's court of appeals in Kansas City upheld Sandra Plunkett's first-degree murder and armed criminal action convictions Tuesday.
In a 17-page opinion written by Judge Cynthia L. Martin, the appeals court's three-judge panel rejected Plunkett's arguments that Callaway Circuit Judge Gary Oxenhandler made mistakes when he refused to let her attorney submit a self-defense instruction to the jury and when he allowed financial records to be included in the state's evidence.
A jury deliberated less than three hours in 2014 before convicting Plunkett, now 41, of killing her husband, former Jefferson City police officer Paul Plunkett, on New Year's Day 2011.
She is serving a life prison sentence with no chance for parole at Missouri's Women's Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center, Vandalia.
Paul and Sandra Plunkett were married in 1998.
He retired from the JCPD a decade later and bought a pest control company from his brother.
Court records said she had developed an addiction to Vicodin and heroin, and paid for her drug habit by overdrawing thousands of dollars from their joint personal and business checking accounts, and by selling items to a local pawn shop.
Meanwhile, he was diagnosed with diverticulitis in 2009, requiring several surgeries and hospitalizations. By the end of 2010, Paul Plunkett generally was confined to a hospital bed in the living room of the couple's Holts Summit home.
Three years after the murder, the jury heard evidence during a four-day trial that Sandra Plunket twice asked "drug associate" Randy Deppe if he knew anyone who would be willing to kill her husband - and that she had told Deppe she already had tried to kill Paul by putting morphine and heroin into his IV drip.
Paul Plunkett was shot in the head before 10 a.m. on New Year's Day 2011.
Jurors were told Sandra Plunkett didn't call authorities until 12:45-12:50 p.m. - after she had left the home to buy heroin in Jefferson City, then disposed of the Marlin .22-caliber rifle and a box of ammunition in separate locations near Holts Summit and New Bloomfield.
Plunkett first told investigators a man in camouflage was pointing a rifle at her from the middle of the street. She later would change her story several times, ultimately telling officials she had killed Paul at his request, "because he wanted to die."
During her trial, the appeals court noted in its ruling, Sandra testified she had been abused by her husband for years and killed him in self-defense.
Before the closing arguments to the jury, her attorney offered a "self-defense" instruction that she had "no duty to retreat" from her own home, but Oxenhandler didn't allow that instruction to go to the jury.
The appeals court found her self-defense claim already was covered by a different jury instruction and that the jury already heard evidence of her "fourth explanation in a series of evolving explanations she had offered."
The court held the first-degree murder conviction showed the jury concluded the killing was premediated. "It appears plain that the jury simply did not believe Wife's trial testimony that Husband died because Wife was defending herself," the ruling said.
Sandra Plunkett's appeal also questioned Oxenhandler's approving the state's use of information from the couple's bank accounts and an insurance policy, which were obtained with subpoenas that she wasn't notified about - violating her constitutional right to be free from "unreasonable" searches.
But, the court ruled, there was no violation. Citing a previous U.S. Supreme Court ruling and appellate case, Martin wrote those are the business' records, there was no claim based on ownership or possession, and "no expectation of privacy associated with the records."