Jury opts for lesser charge in slaying

Jurors convict a Pinellas man of second-degree murder, not the first-degree charge prosecutors sought.

By WILLIAM R. LEVESQUE

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 15, 2000

LARGO -- A St. Petersburg man accused of killing a woman after an argument was convicted of second-degree murder Friday.

Jurors deliberated for about 10 hours over two days before convicting Khamphiene Xayavongsane, 39, of the charge, rejecting the first-degree murder charge that prosecutors sought.

Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge John A. Schaefer immediately sentenced the native of Laos to the maximum term -- 34 years in prison.

Xayavongsane, an interpreter by his side, showed no visible emotion.

Xayavongsane is accused of killing Tadsnee Sriburum, 49, of Tampa in March 1998 outside the Pu Thai Restaurant in Pinellas Park. Sriburum owned a dry cleaning business on Bayshore Boulevard in Tampa.

Prosecutors told jurors that she had challenged his manhood during an argument, telling the defendant in front of others to stop spreading rumors that she had slept with him.

An enraged Xayavongsane shot her once in the head as they stood in the restaurant's parking lot.

Sriburum's fiance, Meui Lovan, struggled to get the gun, eventually shooting Xayavongsane, who then drove himself to the hospital.

Defense lawyers unsuccessfully blamed Lovan for killing his own fiance after learning she was having an affair with Xayavongsane.

Assistant Public Defender Barry Cobb told the judge that his client turned down a plea deal before the trial. In exchange for a 20-year sentence on a no contest plea to second-degree murder, prosecutors agreed to a 20-year term, Cobb said.

Plea negotiations during the trial for a 27-year term in exchange for a plea also were not fruitful, Cobb said.

"To sentence him to more time will be sending a message that he's to be punished for a trial he tried twice to avoid," Cobb said.

Cobb also asked for a lenient sentence because his client has no prior criminal record.

"This is an aberrant event in his life," Cobb said, noting that Xayavongsane had no criminal record even in Laos before he came to the United States in 1981.

Prosecutor Susan Hoffman disagreed, telling Schaefer that Xayavongsane was charged with attempted murder in 1988 after shooting a man in the neck.

That charge was later dropped, she said, because "all of a sudden all of our witnesses and our victim disappeared," fearful of testifying against Xayavongsane.

"He is a thug," Hoffman said. "He frightens people, he scares people, he uses intimidation."

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