CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – After three days of testimony and only 1 hour and 20 minutes of jury deliberation, Theary Lim, charged with killing her Army veteran husband, was found guilty of first-degree murder on Wednesday and immediately sentenced to life in prison.
On Jan. 3, 2022, Clarksville Police conducted a welfare check in the 2200 block of Ladd Drive. Upon arrival, they found 38-year-old Sothon In dead from a gunshot wound to the head. Nearby, his wife, 32-year-old Theary Lim, and her two children were on the floor under a blanket. The next day, Theary Lim was arrested and charged.
Prosecution: ‘This wasn’t an accident, this was calculated’
During closing arguments, Assistant District Attorney Crystal Morgan displayed a professional photograph to the jury of Theary Lim holding a firearm, a leg holster secured to her thigh, and a T-shirt with the words “Girls just want to have guns” printed on the back.
“It’s the defendant’s own statement to Detective (Keenan) Carlton: She admits she had the gun in her hands. She was playing with the gun, she shook it, and it went off,” Morgan told the jury.
Morgan referred to the medical examiner’s testimony that the bullet entered through Sothon’s forehead and exited out the back. She stated the defendant would had to have been standing beside the bed at close range, within 3 feet, when she fired the shot.
“She left her husband in that bedroom for hours to die,” Morgan said. “A nine-hour and four-minute window that Sothon lay in that bedroom – with the defendant and his children in the house – dead.
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“It was an accident?” Morgan said. “What we have to believe to accept that statement is that she retrieved a gun, decided to play with it at the head of her sleeping husband.” Morgan cited testimony from an expert witness who stated it would take 7 pounds of pressure on the trigger in order for that gun to go off. “Does that pass your common sense?
“This wasn’t an accident, ladies and gentlemen,” Morgan said. “It was premeditated. It was calculated. She locks the door at 12:15 (p.m.), she closes the blinds after he’s shot, and at 12:59 (p.m.) she unlocks the door. … Hold her responsible. Find her guilty.”
Defense: How many unanswered questions can you live with?
While Theary’s attorney, Chase Smith, waived opening remarks, he did not pass up on closing arguments. “How many unanswered questions can you have and still find someone guilty of premeditated first-degree murder?” Chase Smith asked. “Moral certainty is required, absolute certainty is not.”
Smith explained this means that when the trial is over and the jury is allowed to speak about the case, they need to be able to “without hesitation” explain why they found her guilty, why she shot him, why she did it intentionally, and why it was premeditated.
He pointed out what he called flaws in the state’s case and with their witnesses. Smith mentioned a “drive-thru forensic test” explaining that it took three years to get a test back on the gunshot residue kit from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, a test that once it was started, only took one day to complete and get results. And he called the results confusing.
“All the (GSR) was on her left hand, none on her right hand,” Smith said before showing the same picture of Theary that the state published. “The picture the state put in, she has the gun in her right hand.” Smith pulled out a form his client signed that waived her right to testify. “She signs that waiver with her right hand.”
Smith furthered his point by referencing the medical examiner report. Though the gun was close to the victims head, it wasn’t close enough to leave a muzzle stamp, meaning there wasn’t hard contact. “No pressure, no press down like you want to really kill somebody because you’re mad.
“It doesn’t prove that she shot him,” Smith said. “What if he shot himself? What if one of the kids shot him? If you have a significant amount of unanswered questions, you’ve got to ask yourselves, how many can you have and still be certain that she’s guilty?” Smith asked the jury.
| MORE: ‘The guy is a war hero’: Cambodian refugee turned Army paratrooper remembered after fatal shooting
Sentenced to life in prison
Theary Lim was found guilty as charged of first-degree murder. After the jury was dismissed, a sentencing was immediately held.
In the state of Tennessee, if any individual is found guilty of first-degree murder, it is a mandatory life sentence (60 years). The only charge Theary was facing was the murder charge. Judge Robert Bateman imposed an immediate life sentence, minus credited time served up to 15%, for a minimum of 51 years in prison.
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