MacNeill Won’t get Parole Hearing for Nearly 40 Years
DRAPER, UTAH – April 22, 2015 (Gephardt Daily)— Martin MacNeill, who is serving a sentence of 15 years to life for killing his wife, Michele MacNeill, in 2007, won’t get his first parole hearing until he is 96 years old.
The likelihood of the former Utah County physician, who is serving his time at Utah State Prison, ever being released from prison is next to none.
MacNeill, 59, was sentenced last fall in 4th District Court to 15 years to life for killing his wife, one to 15 years in prison for obstruction of justice, and was ordered to serve the sentences consecutively, meaning he cannot begin serving time on one sentence until the first one is completed.
In addition, MacNeill was sentenced in an unrelated case to one to 15 years in prison for sexually abusing his daughter in 2007, three months after her mother’s death. A judge ordered that sentence also be served consecutively with the other two.
In January, the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole set MacNeill’s original parole hearing for August 2052.
Michelle MacNeill died in Pleasant Grove on April 11, 2007 following recovery from cosmetic surgery performed eight days earlier. At her husband’s request, the operating surgeon prescribed four medicines for Michele’s recovery; two of the drugs, Diazepam and Oxycodone, would not normally be prescribed to his patients.
Initially, police and autopsy reports concluded that Michele died of cardiovascular disease, but after being pressed to review of the toxicology report, the state’s chief medical examiner found that the combination of medicines in her body could have contributed to cardiac death.
During the trial, which began on October 17, 2013, Chief Prosecutor Chad Grunander stated: “‘It was an almost perfect murder, [MacNeill] pumped her full of drugs’ that he knew would be difficult to detect once she was dead.”
MacNeill is currently appealing his conviction with the Utah Court of Appeals.
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