Hall, David

Common-law husband of a deaf woman, Sandra Reynolds, with whom he had a frequently stormy and sometimes violent relationship. During one 1993 fight with her, he was hitting her when her hearing 24-year-old son Paul, who was making sandwiches in the kitchen, came out still holding the knife he had been using to prepare the food. Paul pulled Hall away from his mother and told him to leave her alone. Enraged, Hall pulled up his shirt and dared Paul to stab him. Paul declined, and Hall went into the kitchen to fetch a larger knife, again daring Paul to use it on him. Sandra, seeing the knives, jumped at her common-law husband, trying to separate the two. In the ensuing struggle, Paul walked into Hall's knife, but no one realized it until Paul left to go to his grandmother's house to escape the situation. Paul collapsed and died outside the house, and Hall was tried, found guilty of manslaughter, and sentenced to 3 years in prison.