Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 17, 1992 TAG: 9201170391
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
CRACK DEALER GUILTY OF MURDER
After killing a man late on the night of Aug. 20, Troy Pleasant headed to Hardee's for a biscuit.Something so callous, Roanoke Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Wanda DeWease told a jury Thursday, should discredit Pleasant's claim that he was forced to kill in self-defense.
The jury agreed, convicting Pleasant of first-degree murder and setting his sentence at life in prison plus two years.
A 22-year-old convicted crack dealer, Pleasant shot Richard Allen Whorley, 35, on Clifton Street Northwest in a rip-off drug deal, according to testimony during a two-day trial in Roanoke Circuit Court.
The life sentence was unusual, prosecutors said, because the trial's theme of guns, drugs and violence has become so commonplace in some parts of Roanoke that juries seldom deliver the maximum punishment.
But in this case, DeWease said, "they certainly sent a message to [Pleasant], and I think it's got to have some deterrent value to the community at large."
Pleasant did not testify, but defense attorneys Ray Ferris and Al McLean maintained that he shot in self-defense after Whorley pulled a gun from the driver's seat of his car and demanded money.
But in telling that story to Sgt. A.S. Smith of the Roanoke Police Department, Pleasant mentioned that the first thing he did after shooting Whorley was to go out for a late-night meal.
"He just killed a man, and he's more concerned about going to Hardee's and getting a biscuit than he is about relating his claim of robbery to the police," DeWease said in challenging Pleasant's version.
Testimony showed that Whorley was shot once in the chest, and lost consciousness as he tried to drive himself to the hospital - crashing his car into the front porch of a house on Patterson Avenue Southwest.
Whorley, who worked in the pressroom of the Roanoke Times & World-News, died a short time later at Roanoke Memorial Hospital.
The case went unsolved for several weeks, with police uncertain even of where the shooting happened. Then, in September, they got a tip from Keith Lewis, an inmate in the city jail.
Lewis testified that on the day after the killing, Pleasant joined him in the same cell block, having just been charged with three counts of distributing cocaine in Salem.
"I might be getting another charge," Lewis quoted Pleasant as saying. Pleasant went on to explain that he had shot a man who tried to drive off with some fake cocaine he was trying to sell him, Lewis testified.
But in a sharp cross examination, Ferris went straight to the issue of Lewis' credibility - noting that he is a six-time convicted felon who has informed on fellow inmates in the past in hopes of impressing the Parole Board.
"To convict Troy Pleasant beyond a reasonable doubt, you must trust Keith Lewis," Ferris told the jury. "The only thing Keith Lewis has done to earn your trust is to steal and commit felonies."
Ferris asked jurors to accept Lewis' story only if they would feel comfortable with him house-sitting their homes for a weekend, then accepting his word that he had taken nothing.
But prosecutors pointed to other pieces of evidence that supported Lewis' account, including a gun that was found hidden in the basement of a relative's home - just where Pleasant told Lewis he had put it.
Because Pleasant used a .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol in the shooting, he also was convicted of using a firearm in the commission of murder. That charge carries a mandatory two-year sentence.
Keywords:
ROMUR