ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, February 26, 1997 TAG: 9702260087
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETTY HAYDEN SNIDER and MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
A Roanoke jury convicted Cepada Wiley of manslaughter Tuesday night in the July 4th shooting death of his brother's bitter rival in a love triangle.
The Circuit Court jury rejected prosecutors' contention that Wiley was guilty of murder. But it also didn't believe Wiley's claim that he shot Jesse Darnell Ferguson in self-defense.
Wiley shot Ferguson four times after Ferguson fought in a motel parking lot with his older brother, Sherrond Wiley.
Cepada Wiley, 22, who had never been in trouble with the law before, will be sentenced by the jury today. He remained free on bond overnight.
Tuesday afternoon, the jury sat through almost two hours of dramatic, wrenching testimony from Kimberly Anita Bonds, the woman Ferguson and Sherrond Wiley had been competing over for two years.
Bonds, 20, testified Tuesday that Ferguson, her ex-boyfriend and the father of her child, grabbed her outside a Roanoke motel on a hot morning last July 4, rage in his eyes.
"He grabbed me by my dress," she said. "He asked me to call his mother - because he was going to die, or go to jail."
Bonds said Ferguson was angry because he caught her at the Embassy Motor Lodge with Sherrond Wiley.
Minutes later, Ferguson was shot to death by Cepada Wiley.
Cepada Wiley, a City of Roanoke employee, came to the motel that morning after being called by his older brother.
In the parking lot, Sherrond Wiley and Ferguson fought; Sherrond Wiley's head smashed into a car window. Then he slammed into a motel-room plate-glass window.
Witnesses' accounts varied, but both Bonds and Cepada Wiley claimed Ferguson was coming after Cepada Wiley, threatening to kill him. It was then, they said, that Cepada Wiley shot him four times.
But in their closing arguments Tuesday evening, prosecutors argued that the evidence undercut that story.
Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Tom Bowers built his argument around the theme of an "hour of decision."
"You see the bad decisions made by all these people," Bowers told the jury.
Ferguson should not have gone to the motel or attacked Sherrond Wiley, he said. Bonds, right or wrong, couldn't decide between Wiley and Ferguson. Someone should have called the police.
"Why would you not call police when you have Jesse out there in this so-called murderous rage?" Bowers asked. "What happened here goes beyond protecting your brother."
He also questioned the credibility of defense witnesses' testimony, which he said conflicted with autopsy findings and evidence, such as bullet holes, at the scene. "Things can change, but physical evidence can't change."
The Wiley brothers, Bowers said, ganged up on Ferguson.
"They team up, grab their prey and set him up for the kill."
Defense attorneys said that wasn't the way things happened. They said Wiley thought his brother's life was in danger, and things happened so fast he didn't have time to think things through.
Defense Attorney Alton Prillaman portrayed Cepada Wiley as a "decent, hard-working, God-fearing person" and Ferguson as a violent man always in trouble with police.
Cepada Wiley found himself confronted with a man who was "bent on trouble," Prillaman said. "He had no choice. He had no choice whatsoever. He had nothing to do but shoot him."
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