Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 29, 1995 TAG: 9503290074
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The Virginia Court of Appeals on Tuesday upheld West's conviction of second-degree murder and the 20-year sentence he received in 1992 from a Loudoun County jury.
West, who prosecutors said killed Barbara Elam West in a jealous rage and left her body in the living room of their Union Street home, has spent the past six years in prison - still maintaining his innocence and filing appeals.
The case has dragged out for so long that West became eligible for parole even before he received a second trial in 1992, after the Court of Appeals reversed his first conviction by a Roanoke jury three years earlier.
West was convicted a second time, after prosecutors repeated their arguments that he became consumed with hate during a bitter divorce that threatened to take everything he cherished - his home; custody of his three sons; and his image as a successful merchant, civic leader and family man.
Six weeks after she filed for divorce, Barbara West was stabbed in the back and slashed in the throat with a butcher knife, beaten with a fireplace poker and strangled with a child's jump-rope.
In challenging his second conviction, West had argued that prosecutors improperly questioned Salem Police Chief Harry Haskins about his recollections of the morning of March 13, 1988, when Barbara West's body was discovered.
After Haskins was challenged by defense attorney Richard Lawrence about several details, prosecutors had him read his notes in an effort to "rehabilitate the witness," West claimed in his appeal. Such "rehabilitation" is improper, the appeal claimed, unless there has been an attempt to impeach the witness with a prior inconsistent statement.
The Court of Appeals agreed with West in a decision released Tuesday, but said the Loudoun County judge's decision to allow the questioning amounted to harmless error.
"The erroneously admitted evidence could not, as a matter of law, have affected the verdict," Judge Johanna Fitzpatrick wrote for the three-judge panel that heard the case.
West's case became so notorious in Salem that his first trial was moved to Roanoke, where Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell was appointed special prosecutor.
A Roanoke jury convicted West of second-degree murder in 1989 and sentenced him to 20 years in prison. But the Court of Appeals later reversed the conviction, ruling that the jury should not have heard testimony from three people who told of conversations in which Barbara West said her husband had threatened to kill her if she left him or took custody of their children.
By the time West was to receive a second trial, the case had received so much publicity that it was moved to Loudoun County. After receiving the same verdict in Leesburg as he did in Roanoke, West filed the second appeal.
West, 43, first became eligible for parole in November 1992, but has been turned down by the Parole Board every year since then - most recently on Feb. 10. He is scheduled for mandatory release in December 1998.
West has maintained that he was across the valley at the time of his wife's killing, eating pizza with his three sons at his parent's home in Vinton. At the time, West owned a record store on Salem's Main Street. He also has held a number of civic positions, including president of the Kiwanis Club and board member of the Salem/Roanoke County Chamber of Commerce.
by CNB