ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, February 4, 1997 TAG: 9702040094
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
A Roanoke City Jail inmate had another 4 1/2 years added to his term Monday for joining three of his cellmates in beating another inmate.
Barry Hudson was hit, stomped and struck in the head with a metal trash can by four inmates last July 27, apparently after a disagreement over an Olympics track event that the prisoners were watching on television.
Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Ann Gardner had asked for a 10-year sentence for Melvin E. Mike, a 20-year-old convicted drug dealer who participated in the attack. At the time, Mike was serving an 11-month, 29-day state sentence and a 93-month federal sentence.
Hudson was attacked from behind as he sat at a table in one of the jail's fourth-floor pods. He suffered bruises, a broken jaw and cuts. His injuries required surgery, and Hudson has since been readmitted to a prison hospital for nerve damage and other complications.
"In our institutions, whether it's the city jail or the state penitentiary, we cannot have this kind of thing going on," Gardner said in asking Circuit Judge Richard Pattisall to impose a 10-year sentence for malicious wounding.
Defense Attorney Tom Blaylock argued that was too much, considering that three other inmates who were more involved in the attack than Mike pleaded guilty under agreements that set their maximum punishments at five years.
Blaylock argued that a 10-year term would punish Mike, the only inmate to plead not guilty, more than his codefendants simply for exercising his constitutional right of having a trial.
"Now if that's justice, maybe it's time for me to stop practicing law," Blaylock said.
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