A former Chesterfield County woman who a judge said coldly and calculatingly set up her husband's death because he was a detriment to her happiness was sentenced to 20 years in prison Tuesday for plotting the murder with her lover.
Judge Michael C. Allen of Chesterfield Circuit Court said he was struck by the "calculated and cold-blooded nature" of the killing and of Delilah M. Wiley's decision to "end a life because it was inconvenient" to her affair with another man, who carried out the slaying.
Allen then sentenced Wiley, 25, to 25 years in prison with 10 years suspended for second-degree murder and to an additional 10 years with five years suspended for conspiracy to commit murder in the April 1, 2008, shotgun slaying of her husband, Dell Shawn Wiley, 25, of Chesterfield.
The punishment was at the high end of state sentencing guidelines, which called for an active prison term of between 13 years and eight months and 22 years and six months. Wiley pleaded no contest to the crimes in December.
In seeking stiff punishment for Wiley, Chesterfield prosecutor Larry Hogan drew a parallel between Delilah Wiley and the Delilah of biblical lore, a "temptress and betrayer" who deceived the man who loved her. Delilah Wiley did the same thing to her husband, Hogan said.
According to evidence, Wiley conspired with Christopher Tyrone Clagon, 27, of Petersburg, to kill Dell Wiley in the parking lot of the Pre Con Inc. plant in the 13700 block of Jefferson Davis Highway in Chester.
Clagon, a Pre Con employee, calmly retrieved a 12-gauge pump shotgun from the trunk of his car, walked over to where Wiley was smoking a cigarette and shot him three times in the chest. The last two shots came as Clagon stood over his fallen victim, evidence showed.
The shooting occurred as scores of employees were leaving or arriving during the plant's 7 a.m. shift change.Delilah Wiley and Clagon began their affair about two months before the slaying and soon began plotting how they would kill her husband. Both worked the same shift at Pre Con.
Hogan said investigators determined that Delilah Wiley tried to call Clagon 10 times within 45 minutes after the shooting but didn't try to call her husband once.
In seeking leniency, defense attorney John Rockecharlie said Wiley suffers from cognitive difficulties and mental-health issues, and was the victim of ongoing physical abuse by her husband that continued up until the day before he was killed.
Rockecharlie also rebutted the prosecution's assertion that Wiley was the primary instigator of the murder plot. "I don't think she was the engine that drove the train," the attorney said. "She was a passenger on that train."
Clagon, her former lover, was convicted by a jury in September 2009 of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and felonious use of a firearm. They recommended a 38-year prison term that a judge later imposed.
After the trial, Wiley moved to Norfolk, where she was arrested last May in her husband's death. On Dec. 11, while incarcerated at Riverside Regional Jail and awaiting trial, she married a man she met in Norfolk. He attended Tuesday's hearing in her support.
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