Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 10, 1992                   TAG: 9203100331
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

JUDGE WON'T SIT OUT WEST'S NEW TRIAL MAY BE MOVED

Testifying Monday in Roanoke Circuit Court, West maintained that his right to a fair trial has been jeopardized by the intense interest his case drew, not just from Roanoke's news media but also from its judges.

West was convicted in 1989 of killing his wife, Barbara Brooks West, during a bitter custody fight over their three sons. But the Virginia Court of Appeals reversed the conviction - ruling that it was based on improper hearsay evidence - and ordered a new trial.

In one of several of pretrial motions made during Monday's hearing, West asked that Judge Clifford Weckstein disqualify himself from hearing the second trial, a request Weckstein denied. In making the request, West cited a memorandum that Weckstein wrote 18 months after the 1989 trial.

In the memo, Weckstein noted to another judge that a member of the jury that found West guilty of second-degree murder and set his punishment at 20 years in prison since had been tried and acquitted in his court of malicious wounding.

Weckstein wrote that "it was reported" that the same juror had "single-handedly brought the jury down to second-degree murder" in the West case. The memo was addressed to Roanoke County Circuit Judge Kenneth Trabue, who presided over West's first trial but has recused himself from hearing the retrial.

Now, West wants Weckstein to recuse himself because of his "unusual" interest in the case. "It's Mr. West's position that the memorandum waves too many red flags as to the bias or unbias of the court," his attorney, Richard Lawrence, said.

Although Weckstein said he could "understand completely" such distrust from a man wrongfully convicted on improper evidence, he said he saw no reason to step down.

"With all due respect, I do not perceive how an objective member of the public could conclude from this memo that I had an unusual interest in this case or that I had any bias whatsoever concerning Mr. West," Weckstein said.

Because of a television news story about the memo - combined with regular stories that have followed the case since its inception - West had also asked that the trial be moved out of Roanoke.

Weckstein delayed a decision on that motion, but said he would make inquiries to see if courts in other jurisdictions might be able to accommodate the two-week trial, set to begin March 30.

The case was so well-known in Salem that it already has been moved once - from Salem to Roanoke, where the first trial was held.

"I don't feel like I could get a fair trial at all locally," West testified. "The local community has been stirred up by this case, and unjustly so."

Witnesses testified at West's first trial that he and his wife were separated and involved in a custody fight over their children in the months before her body was found in their Union Street home in March 1988. Barbara West had been stabbed with a butcher knife, strangled with a jump rope and beaten with a fireplace poker.

Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell saw no need to move the trial from Roanoke, noting that juries had been seated in much more notorious trials - including ones for Manuel Noriega and the Los Angeles police officers accused of beating a black motorist.

"I don't think that Mr. West even begins to measure up to Manuel Noriega or Rodney King," Caldwell said.

When West was not testifying Monday, he spent much of the hearing tapping on his attorney's shoulder and whispering suggestions into his ear.

But once he took the witness stand, it became obvious that he and Caldwell - who was appointed special prosecutor in the case - do not get along.

Caldwell's cross-examination was so pointed that West skipped the pretrial matters at hand and went straight to the main issue of his upcoming trial.

"I did not murder my wife," he said as he raised his right hand.

The exchange became so heated that Weckstein later admonished: "Mr. West, please don't argue with Mr. Caldwell. Mr. Caldwell, please don't argue with Mr. West."

Keywords:
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