Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 4, 1994 TAG: 9408040054
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But Wednesday in Montgomery County Circuit Court, Shanks waived his right to a speedy trial and indicated that he was going to plead innocent.
Shanks, represented by Christiansburg lawyer John Huntington, also requested an evaluation of his sanity at the time of the robbery he is accused of committing and when he gave a statement to Blacksburg police.
Shanks, 30, of Christiansburg, is charged in Montgomery County with robbing an A&J Quick Shop convenience store in Blacksburg in June 1993.
Shanks had been paroled from the Virginia prison system two months earlier, after serving about 13 years of a 41-year sentence for the 1979 murder of Edward Charles Disney, 17.
Huntington indicated he would move to suppress the statements Shanks gave to police.
Judge Ray Grubbs denied Huntington's request that a psychologist be appointed to assist him in reviewing a voluminous amount of medical records for Shanks.
Huntington argued that Shanks was operating under diminished mental capacity when he talked with Detective Donnie Goodman in early March. Shanks attempted suicide at about the same time he talked with Goodman, Huntington said.
Shanks also faces a malicious wounding charge in Pulaski County, where he is accused of savagely beating Bobby McDaniel, a Hazel Hollow man who sustained serious head injuries inflicted with a claw hammer.
In April interviews with the Roanoke Times & World-News, Shanks said he was going to refuse legal counsel and wanted to plead guilty.
``I did what I did and I'm ready to face punishment,'' he said then, adding that ``had I not confessed, there were people waiting to testify against me.''
Grubbs appointed Huntington to assist Shanks in his defense when Shanks refused to sign a financial disclosure statement used to determine whether people qualify for a court-appointed attorney.
Shanks also appeared briefly in Pulaski County Circuit Court earlier this week, where an order was entered for a mental evaluation by the Mental Health Services of the New River Valley.
Shanks' confessions came at about the same time authorities were searching for Billy Joe Hampton, 35, whom Pulaski County has also charged with the McDaniel beating.
Pulaski County authorities expect to bring Hampton to Virginia soon from North Carolina, where he was arrested after a three-state manhunt.
Hampton also faces charges of rape and car theft in West Virginia and robbery, carjacking and malicious wounding in Montgomery County.
He pleaded guilty in North Carolina last month to abducting a woman from a Wal-Mart parking lot and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Hampton was paroled in 1992 after serving time for the 1975 murder of a 95-year-old woman and for unrelated forgery charges. Hampton and Shanks met in prison in 1980.
by CNB