Navy officer convicted of pushing his wife out of window to her death petitions Supreme Court for review

Four years after Navy Lt. Craig Becker was convicted of pushing his wife out a seventh-floor window to her death while the couple was stationed in Belgium, an attorney for the officer is making a last-chance petition to the Supreme Court , saying key evidence was omitted from the trial. Becker, a decorated explosive ordnance disposal officer, was sentenced in 2022 to life without parole in the 2015 death of 32-year-old Johanna Hove-Becker, with a jury finding he was guilty of premeditated murder, assault consummated by a battery and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. The trial followed years of dispute over who would prosecute the case; Becker remained in the custody of Belgian legal authorities for two years after Hove-Becker’s death while the Navy declined to take jurisdiction. Then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis ultimately ordered the Navy to take the case in 2018. While prosecutors said Becker had had a “visceral” reaction to learning Hove-Becker had a new boyfriend and was thus motivated to later drug her with sleeping pills and push her from the window to her death, Becker’s attorney says evidence left out of trial points to the deceased woman’s own mental instability. In an Oct. 16 petition for writ of certiorari, or formal review request to the Supreme Court, Becker’s attorney David Sheldon, a former Navy Judge Advocate General, argues that a series of text messages between Becker and his wife seven months before her death constitute evidence that she was su…