Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 27, 1990 TAG: 9007270318
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONICA DAVEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Medium
After two hours of deliberation, a jury decided that Hawkins, 24, should be sentenced to life in prison, the most severe punishment he could have received.
Two jurors wept and Hawkins shook as the verdict was read Thursday evening following three days of testimony.
Hawkins' mother and several other family members - seated behind him - sobbed loudly. On the other side of the aisle in the spectator area, a crowd of Jimmy Spinner's family members sat silently.
Spinner, a 51-year-old farmer, was shot to death Nov. 26 along a back road in Bedford County.
Prosecutor James Updike said Hawkins shot Spinner - who had met the younger man only minutes earlier when he volunteered to help tow Hawkins' pickup truck out of the muddy road - for no reason.
Hawkins' defense attorney conceded that Hawkins killed Spinner, but claimed it was not a premeditated or malicious act. Asking for a voluntary-manslaughter conviction, defense attorney Richard Lawrence suggested in his closing argument that Hawkins was drunk and may have believed Spinner was about to harm him.
Circuit Judge William Sweeney, who will formally sentence Hawkins after a background report is written, declined a defense motion to throw out the verdict.
Sweeney reminded the defense counsel that he had given jurors instructions about four possible verdicts: not guilty by reason of self defense, manslaughter, second-degree murder and first-degree murder.
"I have no quarrel with that," Sweeney said of the jury's choice of the last alternative, which carries the most serious prison sentence. "That's our system."
Lawrence said afterwards that he probably will not appeal the conviction. "There's not much to appeal," Lawrence said.
Lawrence, who had hoped for a 20-year sentence for his client, said the truth about what happened that November night did not come out.
Two friends of Hawkins who were with him that night testified for the prosecution. "They know the truth," Lawrence said. He said they did not tell it to the jury because they were worried about their "own involvement."
Mike Meador, Hawkins' friend, testified that he was thanking Spinner for his help when Hawkins gunned the man down with no cause. The defense had said Meador actually had been arguing with Spinner and may have provoked a fight.
The defense attorney rested his case without calling a witness.
Lawrence said his client made his own decision not to testify. At lunchtime Thursday, Lawrence met with family members and they again agreed that Hawkins would not take the stand.
Throughout the trial, Lawrence told jurors his client had no motive to kill Spinner since he did not even know him. For that reason, he argued, the killing couldn't have been a premeditated, cold-blooded murder.
"Mr. Spinner's dead because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time," Lawrence said after the verdict.
For Spinner's family, the decision was the end of a long torment.
"We thank the Lord," said Frances Noell Spinner. "My brother's gone, but still we just have to go with the verdict and the law."
Though he watched the entire trial with the rest of the Spinners, Frances Spinner said he still isn't sure what happened out on that dark road.
"It's hard to say," he said. He's sure of one thing. "It happened for nothing."
Updike said the jury's verdict was appropriate.
"It was a senseless murder of a hard-working man," Updike said. "That doesn't change the fact of the tragedies for both of these families."
In his closing argument, Updike reminded jurors that he legally did not need to supply them with Hawkins' motive. In this case, it would have been impossible, he said later.
"There was no reason," he said.
"There's a natural feeling to think that there has to be a motivation," he said.
Years ago - in gentler times - that was probably true, he said. "I wish our existence today were that simple. But that's the way it is now."
by CNB