Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 25, 1993 TAG: 9302250097
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Medium
TEEN WON'T TESTIFY IN SLAYING TRIAL
Brian Robertson will not take the stand to testify about how and why he shot and killed Leonard Nathaniel Hodges last September."He's too fragile," said Harry Garrett, the 17-year-old youth's defense attorney.
Garrett said Wednesday that after consulting with Robertson and his family, he had decided not to put Robertson on the witness stand.
The decision reversed Garrett's promise to a Bedford County jury at the start of Robertson's trial that it would get to hear the youth testify.
Bedford Circuit Judge William Sweeney pointed that out to Garrett, cautioning him that the jury could be left to wonder why.
Sweeney said prosecutor Jim Updike, although he wouldn't be able to condemn Robertson for not taking the stand, likely would use the broken promise in his closing argument today.
Garrett said he knew the risk involved with telling the jury Robertson would testify, and then not following through.
But he said the youth wasn't prepared to take the stand. Earlier Wednesday, Robertson wept through much of his father's testimony.
With that, Garrett then rested his defense of Robertson, standing trial as an adult in the slaying of Hodges, who was shot during an argument with Robertson's father over the price of a used car Hodges had for sale.
The jury will hear closing arguments from Garrett and Updike this morning and then begin deliberations.
There may have been other factors why Garrett didn't put Robertson on the stand, however. Those may have had more to do with the prospect of Updike's getting the chance to cross-examine the youth.
Updike already had dealt harshly with most of Garrett's defense witnesses, particularly Robertson's father, David "Doodle" Robertson, and a surprise witness who surfaced for the defense Tuesday night.
The witness, Vickie Snavely, telephoned Garrett at his home after 10 p.m., volunteering to testify for Robertson.
Snavely testified Wednesday that in 1988 Hodges tried to attack her in her Salem home.
At the time, Hodges lived in Salem and, Snavely said, was her neighbor. He later moved to Thaxton, where he was killed.
Snavely said she had the patio door of her home open one day while some landscapers were working on her yard.
She never had met Hodges, but she said he came into her house and grabbed her around the shoulders. She said she could smell alcohol on him.
She managed to push him out of the house and lock the door. Hodges then started to hit the door and curse her, she said.
Snavely said she called her husband at work. He came home and confronted Hodges. Hodges tried to punch her husband, she said.
She said Hodges told her husband, "I'm going to go in and get my gun and blow you away."
Afterwards, until Hodges moved to Thaxton, she said he would often walk around near her yard with a pistol and sometimes fire it into the air.
Her testimony seemed to support Garrett's argument that Hodges was a violent and abusive man who started the argument with Doodle Robertson and was ready to shoot the older Robertson when Brian Robertson shot him first.
However, Updike worked to undermine Snavely's testimony.
He had Hodges' widow, Peggy Hodges, testify that Snavely called her the evening after Hodges allegedly attacked her. Hodges said that Snavely cursed at her over the telephone.
Further, Hodges testified that Snavely had invited her husband into her home that day to look at some remodeling that had been done in the house.
Under cross-examination, Snavely denied those accounts.
Updike ended by shaking his head and suggesting that she must have deeply disliked Leonard Hodges to come forward after he was dead.
Harsher was Updike's cross-examination of Doodle Robertson, who took the witness stand Wednesday morning.
Robertson went through the events that led up to his son's shooting Hodges four times in the chest.
Some of his statements contradicted what he told police shortly after the shooting.
Updike questioned him repeatedly on the contradictions.
Why did he say he had not been drinking the day of the shooting when later he had said he consumed as many as 10 beers?
He told police that during the argument with Hodges, Hodges said he couldn't fight him because he was old and crippled. Wednesday, Robertson told Updike he didn't remember Hodges saying that.
Also, Updike pressed Robertson on why he didn't hear the first shot his son fired at Hodges? Updike said the gun would have been only about an arm's length away from his ear.
"I can't get up here and say I heard something that I didn't," said Robertson, 44.
Updike suggested that Robertson wasn't telling the whole truth about what happened when Hodges was killed.
He further pressed Robertson on his contention that he saw Hodges raise a shotgun toward him when his son shot Hodges. But at the same time, Robertson failed to notice anything unusual about Hodges' walking.
Hodges, 58, had a brain disorder caused by alcoholism that caused him to stagger and need a cane to walk. On the day he was shot, Hodges also had a blood-alcohol level at more than twice the legal limit for intoxication.
Updike has argued that Hodges couldn't have raised the shotgun at Robertson because he was using the gun to steady his walking.