MOUNTLAKE TERRACE — A jury convicted a Mountlake Terrace man Tuesday of second-degree murder in the 2018 death of a 29-year-old woman.
Prosecutors alleged the motive for David Nieuwenhuis’ killing of Candice Black crystallized on Nov. 3, eight days before her death. On that day, his stepson Kyle Johnson died of a drug overdose. Nieuwenhuis blamed Black, who was Johnson’s girlfriend.
At Swedish Edmonds, doctors explained the prognosis to Nieuwenhuis, Black and her mother. Nieuwenhuis went into a rage. He called Black sexist names.
“It should’ve been you,” he said, Black’s mother testified at trial last week.
“It was very aggressive,” she added. “And he threatened her life.”
Nieuwenhuis’ defense attorneys argued he was simply grieving in his own way.
On the afternoon of Nov. 11, 2018, Nieuwenhuis told Black to come pick up her belongings from his Mountlake Terrace home, where she had been staying with Johnson. She took the bus from Seattle with a couple friends, according to court papers. Nieuwenhuis told Black she had to come alone, one of those friends reported to police. Black asked the friends to wait for her. She’d call them when she was ready to leave.
The defendant told police that Black got to his home around 4 p.m. that day. They talked in his living room for about two hours. He reportedly told her he’d found evidence she had been dealing drugs with Johnson. Nieuwenhuis said he was going to report it to the police, according to court documents.
He went to use the bathroom. When he came back, Nieuwenhuis reported, Black hit him in the head with an iPad.
His defense attorneys argued he was in “the fight for his life” when he grabbed a maple stick from behind his front door and hit Black with it. The two somehow ended up outside. Nieuwenhuis left Black out there, went back inside and fell asleep, according to court documents.
Around 12:25 a.m., Nieuwenhuis called 911. He reported Black was lying in the driveway and that he might have killed her.
“No one has to be a punching bag. That includes in your own living room,” said public defender John Chase in his closing statement Friday. “… Homicide can be justifiable under the right situation.”
Deputy prosecutor Elliot Thomsen said Nieuwenhuis had no injuries, however.
Less than three weeks after Black’s death, prosecutors charged Nieuwenhuis with second-degree murder. In 2019, that charge was upgraded to premeditated murder in the first degree.
Thomsen argued Black’s killing was planned “revenge.”
“Mr. Nieuwenhuis was not in a fight for his life,” Thomsen said in his closing statement. “He was in a fight for Ms. Candice Black’s life. He wanted to take her life and that’s what he did.”
The defense did not dispute that Nieuwenhuis killed Black, only that it was not premeditated. Chase even conceded his client acted recklessly.
“I’m not asking you to find him not guilty of the crimes charged,” he said. “We’re asking you to find him guilty of manslaughter in the first degree. No more and no less.”
After a four-day trial last week before Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Millie Judge, the jury found the defendant guilty of a different lesser charge — second-degree murder. Nieuwenhuis, 46, declined to testify.
An obituary noted Black was an Edmonds native who loved the arts and Disney entertainment. She was an Edmonds-Woodway High School graduate.
Sentencing is set for May 9.
Jake Goldstein-Street: 425-339-3439; jake.goldstein-street@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @GoldsteinStreet.
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