Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 14, 1992 TAG: 9203140229
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-6 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By KATHY LOAN NEW RIVER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Leroy Bryson Jr., 32, pleaded not guilty in Montgomery County Circuit Court. He will be sentenced next month after a background report is prepared.
Bryson told Judge Kenneth Devore, who heard the case without a jury, that he did not rape the woman last April. Instead, he said, she consented to sex after a night of dancing and drinking beer.
He said he did not mean to hit the woman in the head with the hammer, but swung it in her direction because he was frustrated by her nagging him.
But the woman testified that she went to the man's home in Shawsville after he said he wanted to get money from his grandmother "to buy crack cocaine with."
The woman testified she and Bryson were longtime friends, but had never been intimate. The woman said she and Bryson stayed in his room watching television for several hours. Bryson's mother was asleep across the hall, she said, and he told her to be very quiet.
She lay on the bed, fully clothed, as they watched television. She said Bryson left the room several times, saying he was going to call his grandmother.
When he returned to the room the last time, she didn't hear him come in. But, she said, she felt "a sharp blow to my head and all I could hear was ringing."
She was hit again and saw the hammer, she said, but Bryson put his hand over her mouth and told her to be quiet.
She said she asked him not to hurt her but "he forced me to have sex."
As the rape was occurring, the woman testified, she was begging Bryson to take her to the hospital. Bryson left the room to get her something to wear to the hospital because her clothes were bloody, she said.
She asked him to get her a wash cloth to wipe the blood from her face and when he left, she ran outside the house. Bryson's stepfather, Dallas Wiley, testified that he took her to Roanoke Memorial Hospital.
Under cross-examination by defense attorney Joe Painter, the woman testified that she has used crack cocaine but did not consider herself a regular user and did not smoke any that night.
Bryson testified he hit the woman with the hammer after having sex with her, not before. He said both he and the woman had smoked crack at her friend's apartment earlier that night and that she asked him to get $40 to buy some crack and gasoline for his car.
When they were at his house, Bryson testified, she kept "nagging" him to get the money. He would leave the bedroom, but never called his grandmother, he said.
He pulled the hammer from under his bed and swung it toward her, he testified, because he was frustrated by her constantly asking about getting the money.
Bryson testified he and the woman had been intimate before and he said she had began making overtures to him on this particular night.
Commonwealth's Attorney Phil Keith told Devore in closing arguments that the woman's story rang more true than the defendant's. There would be no logical reason to hit someone in the head who was willing to have sex with you, he said.
The woman began to cry and Devore pronounced Bryson guilty of both rape and malicious wounding.
"Thank you," she said.
by CNB