Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 5, 1993 TAG: 9303050077
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DOUGLAS PARDUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
BABY-SALE CHARGES DROPPED
Charges have been dropped against a Dickenson County man accused of trying to sell his infant daughter and unborn son.The man is expected to either die or remain in a vegetative state after attempting to hang himself in jail last week, Dickenson County Commonwealth's Attorney Don Askins said Thursday.
Trial for James Ira Owens, 21, had been scheduled this week, but Askins said he dropped prosecution after doctors said that if Owens "manages to survive, he will never regain reasonableness."
Owens is on a respirator, unconscious and "deteriorating badly" at the Dickenson County Medical Center, Askins said.
Doctors asked Owens' wife on Monday if she wanted the respirator turned off, apparently because he has no brain function, but she declined, Askins said. He had been hanging by the neck for five to 10 minutes before jail guards found him and attempted to revive him, authorities said.
Owens' wife, Stephanie Gail Owens, still faces charges. But she is to be tried as a juvenile because she was 17 in January when the couple was charged after an undercover investigation. She now is 18.
In a brief telephone interview Thursday from the Dickenson County Medical Center, Stephanie Owens wouldn't comment on her husband's condition. As to the charges against her, she said, "I don't know what they're going to do."
Authorities have said they thought Stephanie Owens reluctantly went along with her husband in a scheme to sell their 9-month-old daughter and her unborn son. Exactly why the couple advertised their children for sale remains uncertain, but court testimony indicated that they needed money so they could move to Alabama and get new jobs.
They were arrested in an undercover police investigation after they offered to sell their daughter for $25,000 and their son, when he was born, for $20,000, according to testimony.
In what is believed to be the first such decision in Virginia, a Dickenson County judge in January placed Stephanie Owens in foster care in order to protect her unborn son. The boy was born last month and now is in foster care. The couple's daughter, now 11 months old, also is in a foster home.
In January, James Owens was ordered sent for psychiatric evaluation. That evaluation was completed last month, and he was found competent to stand trial and assist in his defense.
Ron Kendrick, one of the sheriff's investigators who handled the investigation, said there was no indication in the psychiatric report that Owens might be suicidal. And, he said, Owens showed no indications of being suicidal.
Kendrick said Owens attempted to hang himself early on Feb. 25. He tied a sheet to a jail bar and around his neck and then apparently stood on a bucket and kicked the bucket from under his feet. Three other inmates were in the same cellblock but were asleep and didn't know what was going on until a guard came by on routine patrol, Kendrick said.
Guards attempted to revive Owens, and he was taken to the hospital where his heartbeat and breathing were restored with the aid of a respirator.
Authorities said Owens left a suicide note. They declined to say what was in the note, except that "it didn't have anything to do with the criminal charges."