@pknotts19

After a three-week trial and one hour of deliberations, an upstate New York jury on Monday found Muzzammil “Mo” Hassan guilty of second-degree murder for beheading his wife.

In February 2009, Hassan, who founded a TV network aimed at countering Muslim stereotypes, went to a police station in the Buffalo, New York, suburb of Orchard Park and told officers his wife was dead, police have said.

Aasiya Hassan had been decapitated, with prosecutor Paul Bonanno saying during opening arguments that the long knife used by her husband had left marks on his office’s tile floor.
Hassan gave his own closing arguments Monday. Earlier in the trial, he had dismissed his attorney, Jeremy Schwartz, who by trial’s end was acting as his legal adviser.

“Mr. Hassan has felt that throughout the tenure of his marriage, no one had listened to his side,” Schwartz told reporters after the verdict. “It was important for him in the two hours that he had for summation to get across his side and how he saw his marriage.”

Hassan listened quietly to the jury verdict, Schwartz said. Hassan has the right to appeal after he is sentenced, Schwartz said.

According to prosecutors, Aasiya Hassan had filed for divorce less than a week before she died.
2009: Woman beheaded in New York.

On the day she died, Aasiya Hassan agreed to take some of her husband’s clothes to his office after he had moved out of their home. He had told her he would not be there, prosecutors said.

By the CNN Wire Staff