ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, May 2, 1996 TAG: 9605020033
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
The sentencing phase is expected to begin today in the capital murder trial of Scotty Wayne Overby, a Montgomery County man accused of mutilating and killing his estranged wife last summer.
Overby, 28, is expected to testify as part of his lawyers' efforts to help him avoid the death penalty.
That's unless Montgomery County Circuit Judge Ray Grubbs grants defense lawyer Jimmy Turk's requests that Grubbs reject Overby's no-contest pleas to capital murder, rape and object penetration, and restart the jury-selection procedure.
Overby entered the pleas Tuesday against the advice of his lawyers. They leave little room for the judge to consider lesser charges of murder or manslaughter.
That Overby, who worked as a painter at local nursing homes, killed his wife has been admitted from the trial's start. But Turk and co-counsel Robbie Jenkins have argued the crime doesn't meet the criteria of capital murder. They say a depressed and suicidal Overby changed his statements until he had given investigators enough grounds to charge him with capital murder. They say deputies goaded a tired and remorseful Overby into recanting repeated denials and admitting to raping Sheila Ann Stafford last Aug. 12.
Stafford, 27, was found after Overby told neighbors he had killed her and asked them to call the sheriff's office.
Authorities said she had been choked to death, her nose and breasts had been mutilated, and she had been raped and sexually assaulted. A racial obscenity and other comments had been written on her body and she had been urinated on.
Peggy Frank, assistant commonwealth's attorney, finished her case Wednesday. The defense did not offer any evidence after Grubbs rejected Turk's plan to put on expert witnesses who would have questioned the reliability of Overby's confessions.
In her closing argument, Frank rejected Overby's lawyers' contention that he flew into a rage and killed his wife after she told him she was dating another man and thought she might be pregnant.
Frank said there was no evidence of another man in Stafford's life and questioned whether she would flaunt it to him if there were. And she discounted Overby's original statements that the two had consensual sex before he exploded and killed her. When Stafford's nude, mutilated body was found, she still had her shoes on, and her ripped panties were nearby.
Turk told the judge to review taped statements Overby gave, especially the last one in which he eventually admitted to raping Stafford.
"Never, ever did Scotty Overby use his own words ... that he raped his wife," Turk said outside the courtroom. Instead, Overby agreed with the deputies and used their exact same language when replying to questions, the lawyer said.
"He's a walking example of someone whose life has already been taken. There's no life in that young man," Turk said.
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Gene Dalton. Scotty Wayne Overby hangs his head as hisby CNBlawyers Jimmy Turk (back to camera) and Robbie Jenkins confer
Wednesday during closing arguments
of Overby's capital murder trial. color.