El Cajon

Jury selection began Thursday in the sanity phase of the second trial of a convicted killer who shot his wife and four of her relatives in 1985.

Toufic Naddi, 48, of El Cajon was found guilty June 8 of five counts of first-degree murder in the 1985 slayings of his wife, her parents, her cousin and her brother-in-law in the parents’ home on Carlow Way in El Cajon.

A jury deadlocked 11-1 on whether Naddi was sane at the time of the June 1, 1985, shootings, so he is being retried on that issue. His murder convictions will stand.

If the jury finds Naddi was sane during the crimes, it will deliberate as to whether to sentence him to death or life in prison without possibility of parole.

The victims were Naddi’s wife, Aida Naddi, 26; her father, Habib Sabbagh, 73; her mother, Lillian Sabbagh, 58; her cousin, Michael Sabbagh, 38, and her brother-in-law, Osama Mashini, 38.

Prospective jurors were given lengthy questionnaires to fill out that asked about their feelings toward Middle Eastern people, psychiatrists, insanity pleas and the death penalty.