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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 15, 1994                   TAG: 9406210071
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

KILLER'S TERM LENGTHENED BY 10 YEARS

A Roanoke man with a criminal record "like a runaway freight train" was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in prison for violating his probation by killing a man less than a year after he was paroled on two robbery charges.

"You're a dangerous person," Roanoke Circuit Judge Roy Willett told Eric Lee Patterson.

Patterson, 28, was convicted this year of stabbing Steven T. Johnson to death during a scuffle in October at a Westside Boulevard Northwest apartment. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Patterson was back in court Tuesday because at the time of Johnson's death, he was on probation. He now faces 10 years of suspended time he received in 1989 for two robberies.

Patterson - who has said he committed the robberies in a desperate attempt to seek help for a cocaine addiction he has yet to overcome - was sentenced in 1989 to 17 years in prison, with 10 years suspended.

He was paroled from his seven-year sentence in December 1992, about 10 months before he was charged with Johnson's murder.

Comparing Patterson's record to a "runaway freight train," Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell was not impressed when Patterson said he managed to stay out of trouble for the first 10 months he was free on parole.

"So you did great - except for killing a guy, and except for going back to crack cocaine," Caldwell told Patterson.

Patterson has said he stabbed Johnson, an acquaintance, in self-defense during a night of heavy drug use.

Defendants such as Patterson - who commit violent crimes shortly after being released early from prison - often are cited by advocates of Gov. George Allen's proposal to abolish parole, and supporters of a recently passed "three strikes, you're out" law, which requires life without parole for a third violent-felony conviction.

Because the "three strikes" law goes into effect July 1, Patterson was not affected by it. But even if his murder conviction had come after July 1, he apparently would not have fallen under the law because his two robbery convictions would count as only one violent felony since he was sent to prison on both charges at the same time.

Given Patterson's record, Public Defender Ray Leven said, he likely will serve a substantial portion of his 30-year sentence.

by CNB