Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 17, 1994 TAG: 9405170092
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-4 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Short
Garnet Price, 52, was found guilty in January of the December 1992 murder of Lester Dale Harris, a former city of Radford employee whose body was pulled from the New River five days after he was shot. Harris was 46.
A jury convicted Price after hearing evidence that Harris had supplied Price's workers with tainted marijuana. The jury set Price's punishment at 37 years in prison.
Price had pleaded not guilty, telling the jury it was the prosecution's chief witness who shot Harris.
Price was sent to jail after the verdict, with Judge Dow Owens denying a defense motion to allow him to remain free on bond until sentencing.
But once a person is sentenced in Virginia for a crime, it is in the judge's discretion to allow that person to remain free on bond while the conviction is under appeal.
At a sentencing hearing last month, Price's attorneys noted an appeal, and Owens set bond at $500,000. Price, a private contractor for Mountain View Corp., owned by his wife, was able to make bond and was released from jail.
Michael Morchower, a lawyer based in Richmond, has taken over Price's case now that John Quigley has become a General District Court judge. A written notice of appeal was filed last week in Pulaski County Circuit Court.
Morchower said Friday that he had just received the transcript of the trial and had not decided on key lines of the appeal yet.
by CNB