A Logan man convicted of killing his wife to collect on a $110,000 insurance policy will not get a new trial.

U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Greene ruled that David A. Moosman should not be given a new trial on Moosman's claim that he was unconstitutionally denied a jury trial.Moosman personally waived his right to a jury trial a week before the trial started, Greene said in the ruling. Moosman's lawyer again waived that right on the morning of the trial.

Moosman is serving a life sentence at the Utah State Prison for first-degree murder, communications fraud and making a false insurance claim.

On the evening of Sept. 14, 1985, Moosman and his wife, Tamara, were driving down Logan Canyon in Moosman's pickup truck. The truck left the road, vaulted through the air and rolled several hundred feet down a slope into the Logan River.

Moosman jumped out of the truck before it left the road. His wife remained in the truck while it crashed into the river. Her body was later found floating in the Logan River.

A medical examiner concluded that she had died of drowning.

Moosman, an Evanston, Wyo., school teacher who lived in Logan on the weekends, said he tried to help his critically injured wife after the accident.

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But the medical examiner testified at trial that Tamara Moosman had also been struck in the head repeatedly by a blunt instrument not found in the truck.

First District Judge VeNoy Christofferson ruled that Moosman deliberately crashed his truck into the river, jumping out as he did so. When the accident failed to kill his wife, he waded into the river, struck her repeatedly on the head with a blunt object and allowed her to drown.

Moosman lost an appeal before the Utah Supreme Court. He took his case to the federal court, where he filed an appeal on the grounds that his detention at the prison was illegal because he had been denied a jury trial.

The Utah Board of Pardons has set a June 2012 rehearing date for Moosman.

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