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

DATE: THURSDAY, May 5, 1994                   TAG: 9405050174
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

JUDGE GRANTS KILLER'S REQUEST: LIFE IN PRISON

Circuit Judge Clifford Weckstein granted the request, following a jury's recommendation that Edwin C. Turner receive a life sentence for shooting a man to death two years ago during a wild car chase through Southeast Roanoke.

Turner, also known as "Crazy Eddie," was convicted in January of the first-degree murder of William Dale Hartman.

Hartman, 30, was shot five times after being pursued in a 70-mph car chase that ended in the parking lot of the Jamestown Plaza shopping center the night of April 3, 1992.

Turner's lawyers raised an unsuccessful insanity defense, arguing that he was a mentally disturbed man driven out of his mind during a feud in which Hartman burglarized his home and threatened to kill him.

Psychologist Eileen Taylor testified that Turner experienced an irresistible impulse at the time of the shooting, a type of temporary insanity in which he was unable to control his actions. Taylor described Turner as a mentally ill construction worker who considered the world a "combat zone" and himself a soldier of fortune fighting for survival.

But in convicting Turner and setting his sentence at life in prison, jurors sided with another psychologist who maintained Turner was legally sane.

Turner, 40, was back in court Wednesday for a sentencing hearing that is usually a formality after jury trials, with judges almost always following jurors' recommendations.

After prosecutors argued that he should receive life in prison, Turner was asked if he had anything to say before his sentence was imposed.

"I agree with Don," he said, refering to Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell. "I'm public enemy No.1. Give it all to me."

Earlier, defense attorney Jonathan Apgar had asked Weckstein to set aside the jury's verdict, arguing that Turner, who suffers from a manic-depressive disorder, did not receive adequate medication in jail before and during his four-day trial.

"It cannot be excluded that he slipped into a manic phase at the time of the trial," Apgar said. Weckstein denied the motion.

Turner did not testify during the trial, but told the judge at one point, "I'm just mental as hell."