Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 21, 1995 TAG: 9504210118
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ROCKY MOUNT LENGTH: Medium
Joyce, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic and manic depressive who's been in and out of mental hospitals for the past 15 years, said he wasn't given proper medication while he was incarcerated in Martinsville.
And he said he was in a cell with as many as 12 other inmates at times.
"I was under a lot of stress," he said.
Nonetheless, the letter's contents and the testimony of his former girlfriend, Leah Keller, were enough for a Franklin County jury to find Joyce guilty of threatening to do her bodily harm through his letter writing - a felony.
Joyce's visitation with his son was terminated by a Franklin County judge in 1992 because Joyce didn't show up for the hearing. In the obscenity-laced letter he sent to Keller from the Martinsville jail, he wrote, "I don't give a gabout Franklin County court orders."
He also wrote: "If it wasn't for my son, you'd already be dead," and "My blood boils when you come to mind."
Near the end of the two-page letter, Joyce, 32, wrote: "You will pay dearly," which Circuit Court Judge William Alexander said indicated Joyce's intentions toward Keller.
Alexander then gave Joyce the sentence the jury recommended: two years in prison. The maximum sentence for the charge was five years.
Joyce, of Henry County, is currently serving a six-year term for a malicious wounding that did not involve Keller.
Joyce's case was the first in Franklin County to make use of a new state law that allows trials to be split into two parts. If a defendant is found guilty, prosecutors can tell a jury about his or her prior criminal record before it decides on the punishment.
In the past, the only way prosecutors could introduce a prior record was if the defendant testified.
Joyce's prior record included the malicious wounding, three misdemeanor assaults, a misdemeanor of making threatening phone calls and a misdemeanor of shooting a gun on a public street.
"This is a dangerous man," Commonwealth's Attorney Cliff Hapgood told the jury.
Eric Ferguson, Joyce's attorney, asked the jury to take his client's past problems into account and to be as lenient as possible.
After the sentence was imposed, Keller expressed relief.
She said she was a student at Patrick Henry Community College in Henry County, but had to move to Franklin County several months ago and begin taking classes at Virginia Western Community College in Roanoke.
"I feared for my safety," she said. "I wouldn't go to the mall or anything."
Near the end of the jury's three-hour deliberation over a verdict, the trial was delayed when Joyce's mother collapsed outside the courtroom and was taken to a hospital in an ambulance.
No report on her condition was available.
Ferguson said she may have had a heart attack, according to preliminary reports from rescue workers.
by CNB