Tales from Kentucky Lawyers

7. Homicide

7 HOMICIDE The following tales, which recount homicidal actions and the perpetrators ' motivations, number among the most truly bizarre stories in the book. The stories describe deadly family feuds; murders fueled by drugs, alcohol, and affairs; spousal killings; and numerous other accounts of victims and their killers. 74. "HUSBAND CONVICTED OF KILLING WIFE" I tried a murder case last summer, the only one I've tried in my career. I was disappointed but not surprised that we lost the trial. My client was convicted of murder. The case involved the death of one spouse by the other. My client shot his wife-shot her through the head. However , his defense was that it was an accidental shooting, that he accidentally shot her with a .32 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver. And that's probably why we lost the case. It's hard to discharge a revolver byaccident , even though in terms of the mechanics of the operation of the gun and the angle ofthe travel ofthis bullet, I think that to some extent he was telling the truth. It may have happened just as he said. What he said was that he was getting ready to go to the barn to clean two pistols, one ofwhich he had recently fired and one ofwhich he had not fired in quite some time. So he went to the bedroom to get the one he had not fired in some time. While walking back down the hall to go out the back door to the barn, he apparently was cocking the hammer on that revolver and letting it back down. Or likely, if what he said is the truth, he'd cocked the hammer and had forgotten 58 Tales from Kentucky Lawyers to let it go back down. And he may have. I'll explain that in just a minute. But when he passed the living room, where his wife was reading the paper and watching the TV, she, who apparently had nagged him for years about this or that, made some sort of a nagging comment to him. He stopped and stuck his head in the door and saw that she was sitting eight or nine feet away from where he was standing. "What was that you said?" he wanted to know. She made the comment again, then he, with his hands above his shoulders, in a blowing off gesture with pistol in hand folds his hands forward as ifto say, "The heck with you." In one ofhis hands he had the cocked pistol. When he brought his hands forward, the gun slid, causing the trigger to hit his finger and the gun to fire. This is sort of a preposterous story, except that the angle the bullet traveled and the distance involved suggested fully that at least that's where the bullet came from.... I hired a firearms specialist to demonstrate that.... He had also been drinking alcohol that day. But the worst recording in that case was his 911 call to the police. "Well, I shot my wife," he said over 911. "Well, when did you shoot your wife?" "Oh, just a couple of minutes ago." To listen to that message, he sounds intoxicated. "Where did you shoot your wife?" "In the head-d-d-d." "Well, is she still alive? We need to send an ambulance over there?" "Nope. Don't need an ambulance." When the police arrived, he was calmly on the carport leaning against his Cadillac and smoking a cigarette. "Where's your wife?" "Well, she's inside." Actually, she wasn't dead, butshe died within about forty-eight hours. That situation was sort ofodd; a little different. But he was convicted and is now a resident at the Kentucky State Reformatory at La Grange. Peter Ervin, Louisville, April 26, 2001 75. "MURDERER'S SON ACCUSED OF MURDER" I had a fellow call me from Hazard asking me to defend him for mur- HOMICIDE 59 der. I told him that he could get a cheaper lawyer there, as I couldn't come up there for less than twenty thousand dollars. He said, "Money is no question. Come on up and I'll give you the twenty thousand dollars. About thirty years ago, you represented my father in a murder case and the jury found him not guilty." Well, at that point, I stepped aside and was out of his case because he thought I could make...