Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 6, 1991 TAG: 9104060247
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON/ NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: PEARISBURG LENGTH: Medium
The jury will have to decide Monday when deliberations are expected to begin in Hall's armed robbery trial that began Friday in Giles County Circuit Court.
Was he at a steak-and-baked-potato cookout with friends in Pulaski that day, as Hall and his defense attorney, Garland Spangler, claim?
Or was he the man that Commonwealth's Attorney James Hartley contends jumped over the pharmacy counter at the Pearisburg drug store, pointed a .22-caliber revolver at pharmacist Richard Scott Flaggs and cocked the gun's hammer?
"He said he wasn't fooling around. He would shoot me if I didn't do what he wanted me to do," Flaggs testified. "He said he was serious. He wanted drugs."
Flaggs said Hall rattled off a list of medications - Percodan, Percocet, Demerol and Mepergan-Fortis - gave him a plastic grocery bag and told him to put the drugs in the bag. No money, however, was taken.
"I wasn't going to do anything stupid," Flaggs said. So, he gave him the prescriptions. Hall then told him to turn around and face the wall, Flaggs said.
"If I called out or made any move, he said he would shoot the girls [at the front cash register] on his way out," Flagg said.
Hall then fled, he said.
Outside the Rite-Aid, Giles High School student David Martin had been talking to his girlfriend on a pay telephone for about three hours that afternoon.
Martin testified Friday that he saw Hall leave the drug store walking at a fast pace and breathing heavily. He was carrying a plastic bag filled with small plastic bottles, Martin said.
Both Martin and Flaggs described the man they saw as wearing a red flannel shirt, a bandanna tied around his head and a baseball cap with the bill turned backwards. They said the man was unshaven and appeared dirty.
Hall, 30, was arrested several weeks after the holdup by police in Pulaski, where he was living. They confiscated from his home a .22-caliber revolver and a plastic grocery bag.
But Hall and his girlfriend, Dee Dee Brinkley, and a friend, Jeannette Davis, testified that he spent the afternoon of July 1 at the cookout in Pulaski.
They said they arrived at the party at around noon and stayed until 7 p.m., leaving only once for about 15 minutes to walk to Wade's Supermarket located on the next block. The robbery occurred about 4:30 p.m.
However, the host of that cookout, David Whittaker, was not called to testify. Spangler said Whittaker didn't take the stand because his memory of the details from that day was sketchy.
Roger Fisher of the Pearisburg Police Department testified also that Hall told him previously that he spent that day at the hospital, and not at a cookout.
"The whole point is that he gave one story then and one story here," Hartley said.
Spangler tried to establish that the eyewitness accounts of Martin and Flaggs contradicted each other, citing that their descriptions of Hall's pants and the length of his hair, which is well below his shoulders, and the color of some of his clothes were all different.
Spangler also cited the statements of Anna Medley, who testified that a man wearing a bandanna and hat nearly knocked her down as she tried to enter the Rite-Aid on the day of the robbery. But she swore that the man was not Hall.
Under cross-examination, she added that a Pearisburg policeman also almost knocked her down only seconds later when he arrived on the scene.
"A man came out and knocked me backwards and just when I went to open the door again the policeman rushed in," Medley said.
Her recall of the incident, however, was not consistent with the earlier testimony of Officer Tim Vaughn who said he arrived at the store about five minutes after the robbery occurred.
Jury instruction, closing arguments and deliberations are expected as the trial resumes on Monday.
by CNB