OXNARD : Husband Convicted in Choking of Wife

By MACK REED

July 31, 1990 12 AM PT

An Oxnard sheet-metal worker, whose wife testified that he choked her twice during sexual play, was found guilty Monday of first-degree attempted murder and use of a weapon.

A Ventura County Superior Court jury convicted Napoleon Barber, 30, of attempting to kill his 25-year-old wife, Michelle, despite her insistence that they were just “playing commando.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Kathleen M. O’Brien said that Napoleon Barber first used a telephone cord, then eight mitutes later, a speaker wire, to choke his wifein their home on the night of April 21.

She said Michelle Barber called 911 from a pay phone on the street and frantically told a police dispatcher, “My husband strangled me.”

But Michelle Barber’s testimony last week during her husband’s trial contradicted what she told police.

She dismissed audiotapes of the 911 call, saying that it had been a disagreement with her husband.

She told jurors that her husband liked to choke her “when we wanted to do something a little more exciting.”

She said she and her husband had been “playing commando” two to three times per week since she introduced the practice to him eight years ago.

However, Dr. F. Warren Lovell, the Ventura County coroner, testified that the choking was so severe that it left bruises on the woman’s neck and caused tiny blood vessels in her eyes and cheeks to burst.

O’Brien said after the trial that Michelle Barber changed her story to protect her husband. “I think she’s a battered woman and, as is common among battered women, they recant their stories,” she said.

Prosecutors charged Napoleon Barber with two counts of attempted murder in connection with the incident, one for using the telephone cord, and one for later using the speaker wire.

While the jury convicted him for using the speaker wire, it deadlocked 11 to 1 for conviction on whether the initial use of the telephone wire also constituted attempted murder.

Napoleon Barber faces a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole.

Sentencing is scheduled Aug. 31.