ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, October 22, 1996 TAG: 9610220088
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WYTHEVILLE
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
A circuit judge diverged from state sentencing guidelines Monday to give 17-year-old Christopher Shawn Wheeler a 43-year prison term for the 1994 murder of a Wythe County deputy.
Wheeler, who was 15 when he shot Deputy Cliff Dicker, had pleaded guilty in August to second-degree murder and the use of a firearm while committing a felony.
Wheeler originally had been charged with capital murder. After a juvenile judge ruled his statement to authorities inadmissable because no guardian was present when he gave it, prosecution and defense agreed to transfer Wheeler to adult court on a compromise charge of second-degree murder.
Prosecution attempts later to elevate the charge proved unsuccessful.
Judge Colin Campbell said he was going outside the guidelines to impose 40 years for murder and three years on the firearm charge because the evidence supported a capital murder conviction.
The shooting happened Dec. 6, 1994, before the state's no-parole law took effect. Wheeler will be eligible for parole after serving about a quarter of his time and will get credit for the nearly two years he has served already.
Dicker was serving a juvenile petition on Wheeler, who had been in trouble with the law since 1993 on charges such as petty larceny, breaking and entering, and unauthorized use of a vehicle. In more than a dozen instances, he had been placed on supervised probation or the charges were not prosecuted.
"You're here today a young man who's never had the privilege of childhood," said Campbell, who had heard testimony about Wheeler's dysfunctional family. Both the family and the legal system had failed him, Campbell said, but any other sentence would not be proportional to the offense.
It was undisputed that Wheeler wounded the deputy with a 22-caliber rifle, then killed him with a shot to the head from the deputy's own pistol.
But the court heard different accounts Monday of how that happened. Probation Officer Allen Hale testified that Wheeler claimed the deputy had yelled at him when Wheeler started to put back the rifle he had planned to take hunting that morning. Wheeler told Hale he shot Dicker because he thought Dicker was about to shoot him, and Dicker's pistol went off accidentally when Wheeler picked it up.
Clinical psychologist Marilyn Minrath said Wheeler "grew up in a family where you shot first or they shot you," and he thought his life was in danger. She said Wheeler told her and psychologist James Anderson Thomson Jr. that he had picked up his loaded hunting rifle to put it away because of concern that a child next door might find it.
"Does it have any significance to you as a psychologist that he didn't tell that to anyone else?" Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Keith Blankenship asked.
"One could speculate that it's significant. I don't know," Minrath said.
The defense wanted Wheeler placed in a juvenile facility, and possibly on supervised probation, at the time of his mandatory discharge at age 21. The prosecution asked for the maximum of 40-years-plus, rather than the 11-to-22-year sentence range possible under second-degree murder. "This county and this community have indulged this defendant long enough," Blankenship said.
The defense objected when Blankenship asked Trooper Steve Lowe, a Wythe deputy during Wheeler's trial, if Wheeler had shown remorse. After a conference in chambers, Campbell upheld the objection, and Lowe did not answer on the record.
Lowe later told The Roanoke Times that he had been transporting Wheeler to jail when someone asked if Wheeler had anything to say to Dicker's family, "and his response to that question was that they could go to hell."
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