Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 21, 1990 TAG: 9007210179
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONICA DAVEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: COLONIAL HEIGHTS LENGTH: Medium
Hicks was explaining that his case carried the possibility of a death sentence because of the "hire" element, according to fellow inmate George Butler, a convicted felon.
Hicks and Reuben Gregory Barksdale - the man who allegedly killed Hicks' wife in January in exchange for $900 from Hicks - are each charged with murder-for-hire, a capital offense. Barksdale pleaded guilty last week to capital murder and has yet to be sentenced.
Regular old murder was different, Butler remembered Hicks explaining.
"He said if Barksdale would change his testimony and say he acted alone . . . it would not be a capital murder," Butler testified Friday in the third day of Hicks' trial. "He asked me if I could get Barksdale to change his testimony."
Hicks knew that Butler, in jail on check forgery charges, also was the jailhouse barber - a duty that gave him access to just about every prisoner once a week.
If Barksdale alone would take the blame for killing Hicks' wife, he would avoid the electric chair and Hicks would be a free man, Butler recalled Hicks as saying.
Thirty minutes after their chat, Hicks came out of his cell with specific instructions for how he wanted Barksdale to change the story, Butler said.
On two sheets of notebook paper, the former schoolteacher had numbered and listed his suggestions, and he diligently reviewed them with Butler before sending him along on his task, Butler said.
Jurors Friday read blown-up, laminated copies of the lists, which prosecutor Neil Vener has said will later be proven to match Hicks' handwriting.
"He went there to rob Hicks and was startled," instruction No. 4 read. "He was high on coke. He panicked."
In other suggestions on the list, Hicks wanted Barksdale to recant specific details of his earlier confession, Butler said. Hicks wanted Barksdale to say they had not actually purchased the murder weapon - a sledgehammer - together and that Barksdale alone had covered up evidence of the killing inside Hicks' garage, Butler said.
Barksdale has told authorities that Hicks went with him to buy the 4-pound sledgehammer, told him exactly how to carry out the killing and dropped him off at home once it was over.
When Barksdale would not agree to change his story, Hicks then started asking Butler himself to make up a story, Butler said.
Hicks begged Butler to testify that Barksdale had confided to him that the earlier confessions were actually lies, Butler said.
In exchange for that, Hicks variously offered Butler $5,000, $20,000 and the deed to some property in Rustburg, Butler said. Hicks' latest offer had come at dawn Monday - hours before his trial began in Colonial Heights, Butler said.
During cross examination Friday, Hicks' defense attorneys tried to portray Butler's testimony as a pack of lies.
Butler, who has previous felony pornography and cocaine possession convictions in other localities, just wanted to get a deal from the prosecutor on his own charges in Campbell County, the attorneys suggested.
Vener already had told jurors that he agreed to dismiss a forgery and an uttering charge against Butler as part of a written agreement linked to his testimony in the Hicks' case. Convictions for the two felony counts carry a 20-year maximum sentence.
"You wouldn't lie under any circumstance, right?" defense attorney A. David Hawkins asked Butler dryly.
"No."
"Not to cut 20 years off a sentence?" Hawkins demanded.
"No more than I would for $20,000," Butler countered.
In his opening argument, Hawkins had told jurors that Hicks' two pages of writing was misunderstood by the prosecutor. The list was something Butler had conned Hicks into writing and then reinterpreted its meaning when the prosecutor offered him a good deal in his own case, Hawkins said.
by CNB