JURY CONVICTS HUSBAND WHO KEPT BODY IN TRUCK

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, February 21, 1992                   TAG: 9202210350
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B4   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RUSTBURG                                LENGTH: Medium
JURY CONVICTS HUSBAND WHO KEPT BODY IN TRUCK
A jury has set punishment at life in prison for an Evington man who killed his 19-year-old wife and drove around for two days in his pickup truck with her body on the cab floorboard.
The night he was arrested, Rodney Phillip Dotson had said his wife told him she wanted to divorce him, police said. But he told police he did not remember shooting her.
Jurors deliberated for almost two hours Wednesday before finding Dotson, 22, guilty of first-degree murder in the September slaying of Lisa Doige Dotson.
Lisa Dotson was shot once in the back of the head with a .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol. Her body was found after Dotson was pulled over on U.S. 29 and questioned about his wife's disappearance.
Rodney Dotson apparently had spent the weekend driving up and down the Blue Ridge Parkway and had gone to see a movie in Lynchburg, police said.
As the verdict was read, some of Lisa Dotson's friends and family began crying quietly. Dotson sat impassively, as he had through the entire proceeding. He did not testify.
The victim's family and friends were only slightly consoled by the verdict.
"No matter what they do, it's not going to change the fact that Lisa's gone," said Roger Doige, her father. "It doesn't change anything."
Campbell County Commonwealth's Attorney Neil Vener argued that the murder was premeditated and malicious.
Defense attorney Brian Selz portrayed it as a crime of passion, and said the killing was either second-degree murder or manslaughter because no premeditation was involved.
"He destroyed the thing he loved the most," Selz said. "It was the last thing in the world he wanted to do, but he did it."
Vener described Rodney Dotson as a selfish lover who decided that if he could not have Lisa for his own, nobody would.
"At most, she said she was leaving; and she got a bullet in the back of the head," Vener said. "You're leaving? I'll show you - BANG! You're dead."
Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB