Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 9, 1990 TAG: 9006090363
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Herman Ray Barber, 41, received the term in Roanoke Circuit Court for the involuntary manslaughter of William L. Martin, a 79-year-old prominent Roanoke lawyer.
Barber has maintained that he was not drunk the day his speeding sports car rounded a curve on Ogden Road Southwest and slammed head-on into an oncoming car in which Martin was a passenger.
Chief Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Betty Jo Anthony said Barber "took a 2,000-pound piece of metal and turned it into a missile that he aimed down Ogden Road."
"And whatever was in his path, he mowed down," she said.
A jury convicted Barber in April after hearing that blood tests showed his blood-alcohol content was .15 percent shortly after the accident - well over the legal limit of .10 percent at which someone is considered too drunk to drive.
In testimony Friday, Barber, a social worker for the Vietnam Veterans Outreach Center, stuck by an earlier account in which he said he had a single bourbon and water the day of the March 18, 1989 accident.
Defense attorney Charlie Phillips asked Judge Duane Mink to impose a more lenient sentence than the jury's three-year recommendation, such as community service or work release.
Phillips urged Mink to "help save humanity" by keeping Barber out of prison and free to continue his counseling of troubled veterans.
One of those veterans, William Doss of Pulaski, testified Friday that Barber "kept [him] alive" as he fought suicidal feelings brought on by post-traumatic stress disorder.
"If he's incarcerated . . . we'll have no help whatsoever," Doss testified.
After he was charged in the accident, Barber kept his job at the veterans' center - even working with court officials on behalf of clients facing drunken-driving charges.
But a General District Court judge in Salem put an end to that practice last year after learning of the pending charge against Barber, Salem Commonwealth's Attorney Fred King said.
Barber, a Roanoke native, has a checkered past that includes both professional distinctions and criminal convictions.
In 1974, he was convicted of robbing and shooting a man who was making a bank deposit near Crossroads Mall. He went to prison, escaped briefly and was paroled in 1979.
At that point, Phillips said, Barber "pulled himself up in society" - going back to school and earning a master's degree in social services.
Barber also has been a drug and alcohol counselor and president of a local chapter of a national social workers' association.
His victim also had a distinguished past.
Martin, a senior partner with Martin, Hopkins, Lemon and Carter, had been active with the firm until his death. He taught law classes at Washington and Lee University, had been president of the Roanoke Bar Association and once ran for the House of Delegates.
Officials at the veterans' center allowed Barber to keep his job even after he was convicted and have said he will be eligible to be rehired when he is released from prison, court officials said. Barber's supervisor could not be reached for comment Friday.
by CNB