Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 9, 1994 TAG: 9403090197
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WINCHESTER LENGTH: Long
From the moment jurors began deciding whether Billy Layne should live or die, it was apparent they wanted to spare him.
Minutes after they entered the jury room, the jurors sent a note to Circuit Judge George Honts: How many years are there in a life sentence? Can there be a life sentence without parole?
For each of those questions, Honts wrote the only reply the law allowed him: ``I cannot answer this question.''
An hour later, the word came back: The jury had a decision. People filed into the courtroom. The judge warned he would not tolerate outbursts. Crossed-armed sheriff's deputies set up human walls to protect both the jury and Layne from the spectators' section.
Then Clerk Tommy Moore read the sentence: ``Imprisonment for life.''
Cindy Layne - the mother of the 11-year-old girl Layne had mutilated and stuffed into a grave - ran from the courtroom, sobbing and yelling. She got on the elevator, rode to the first floor and headed out into the parking lot, with two law officers trailing behind her. She was still moving fast as she disappeared behind a brick wall.
Defense attorney Terry Grimes shook Billy Layne's hand and told him, ``You dodged a bullet.'' Layne smiled. The lawyers talked quietly with Layne about their plans to appeal last week's guilty verdict - and whether, if he received a new trial, he might face the chance of the death penalty again.
Outside the courtroom, Margaret Layne, the defendant's 69-year-old mother, said she couldn't say she was happy with the sentence.
By the time he's paroled, she said, she'll be dead. ``I'll never see him.''
``But it could be worse,'' Billy's sister, Barbara Chesnut, told her mother.
``Yes, it could be worse,'' Margaret Layne said, blinking rapidly to clear her tear-filled eyes. She still believes her son was railroaded into the conviction. ``I have lost all hope and trust in the judiciary system. I think it's really a police state. I could be accused of this and they'd convict me.''
Botetourt County Sheriff Reed Kelly said he believed Layne could be eligible for parole in 12 or 15 years, a fact that Virginia law did not allow the jury to know.
``Twenty years from now, he'll be on the street,'' Kelly predicted. He said he didn't want to say much until he'd had a few days to put some distance between himself and the trial. But then Kelly added: ``He was afforded a lot of due process that that little girl didn't get.''
The sentence ends one of Virginia's most high-profile murder trials in recent history.
Last week, prosecutors Rob Hagan and Eric Sisler used tire tracks, blood analyses and other circumstantial evidence to prove their case - that Layne had kidnapped Phadra from her Rockbridge County home early Sept. 18, drove her to Botetourt County, sexually assaulted her, crushed her skull with a tire iron and then chopped her legs and stuffed her into a 31-inch-long grave. She was found buried in a patch of stickweeds half a mile or less from the country home where Billy Layne had grown up.
The case was moved to Winchester to help ensure Layne a fair trial.
On Saturday, after five days of testimony, the jury took just two hours to convict him of capital murder.
That set up Tuesday's sentencing hearing. Prosecutors outlined Layne's long record of burglaries and thefts and presented testimony that he had made improper advances toward the 7-year-old daughter of a former employer. The girl testified that Layne had tickled her on her chest and upper thighs; her father testified that he had caught Layne with his hand on the little girl's thigh.
In defense, a sister, a niece, a former brother-in-law and a family friend said they had never known Layne to mistreat children. His mother testified about how hard it was for him growing up poor in a home with an alcoholic father.
Billy Layne, 41, also took the witness stand in his defense, though his attorneys had trouble eliciting more than a few words from him.
Defense attorney W.T. ``Pete'' Robey asked him, ``Do you want to live?'' Layne's head trembled but words wouldn't come out of his mouth.
He stood by his claim that he couldn't remember anything that happened the day Phadra was murdered. He said he couldn't believe he was capable of doing something like that.
Asked how he felt about Phadra's death, Layne said, ``I'm hurt.''
Prosecutors told the jury later that Layne had no remorse - that he'd never said he was sorry for Phadra.
``He's hurt because he got caught,'' prosecutor Eric Sisler said. ``He doesn't deserve to live.''
Robey, however, pleaded that the jury err on the side of mercy - and give Layne a life sentence instead of the death penalty. He emphasized that Layne never had been convicted of a violent crime before this one.
``Why not sentence this man to life in prison - and let him die there when the Lord is ready for him to die?'' Robey suggested. ``Let the main man decide.''
Jurors declined to talk afterward about how they reached their decision.
Grimes, Layne's other attorney, said he believed that on Tuesday the jury finally ``found another side of Billy Layne that it hadn't been allowed to see before. He is human.''
Afterward, prosecutor Rob Hagan stood on the courthouse steps alone. He said Layne's lack of a violent record before Phadra's murder may have swayed the jury.
What he wasn't allowed to tell the jury, Hagan said, was that most child molesters and murderers come across as quiet and nonviolent. But they are really cunning and manipulative, just like Layne, the prosecutor said. In the end, Hagan said, ``He's a coward.''
by CNB