Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 15, 1993 TAG: 9305150153
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Long
\ Brian Robertson said he was so scared.
"I couldn't hear or feel nothing," he told a Bedford County judge at his sentencing hearing Friday. "It felt like my finger had its own mind. It wouldn't stop."
His finger pulled the trigger on a squirrel rifle at least five times, pumping four bullets into the chest of a man who was arguing and exchanging profanities with his father over the price of car.
The man, Leonard Nathaniel Hodges of Thaxton, had his own gun. Robertson, 17, testified Friday that he believed Hodges then raised it to shoot his father. Both men were drunk.
"I started pulling the trigger," he said.
Robertson's own account of the shooting had been promised to a Bedford County jury at his murder trial in February. But at the last moment, defense attorneys for Robertson decided not to put the youth - who stood trial as an adult - on the witness stand.
He was too fragile, they said.
The jury convicted him of second-degree murder.
The fragile youth returned to Bedford Circuit Court on Friday for his sentencing, where Judge William Sweeney had the option to impose the maximum adult penalty of 22 years in the state penitentiary - or to treat Robertson as a juvenile and give him a lesser penalty.
Robertson turns 18 in June.
Defense attorney Harry Garrett pleaded with Sweeney to treat Robertson as a juvenile. "He may be 17 years old . . . but the fact remains he functions more on the level of a 15-year-old," he said.
Garrett asked that Robertson be given no adult prison time.
He called a parade of witnesses - including a juvenile probation officer, a clinical psychologist and former teachers - who testified about Robertson's maturity level, educational abilities and peaceful reputation.
Robertson spent most of his schooling in special education classes before being mainstreamed and dropping out of Liberty High School. He has an IQ of 79. All of the witnesses said Robertson was immature for his age.
They said that before the shooting, he had not been a violent person. His only problems were that he skipped school too much and he sometimes disrupted class by acting silly or immature.
His seventh-grade teacher, Joyce Bailey, testified that she was concerned about what might happen to her former pupil. She was not subpoenaed to testify Friday, but volunteered on her own. "I would hate for him to go into an institution with hardened criminals that would make him hard," she said.
Garrett offered an alternative. He called a construction supervisor for Southwest Construction Co. in Vinton, who promised to hire Robertson if Sweeney did not sentence him to prison time.
But Commonwealth's Attorney Jim Updike argued that Robertson deserved to spend time behind bars because of the seriousness of his crime.
He emphasized the number of times Hodges was shot - four.
He took issue with the portrait of Robertson as nonviolent, after being convicted of murder. "He killed an individual," Updike said.
He called Hodges' widow, Peggy Hodges, to testify that not only did she lose her husband when he died, but she also lost his $2,000 monthly pension and disability benefits.
Nor has she been able to live in their house since the slaying.
Leonard Hodges, 58, a General Electric worker, was killed Sept. 11 in the doorway of his home along Virginia 684 in Thaxton after he got into a heated argument with Robertson's father, David Robertson, over the price of a used Nova he had for sale in his yard.
Updike grilled the younger Robertson when he took the witness stand Friday for details about how that dispute eventually escalated into murder.
Saying that his memory is better now than it was soon after the shooting, Robertson contradicted several things he told police after his arrest.
He testified Friday that he never "showed" Hodges the squirrel gun in a threatening way - contrary to a taped confession he made to investigators following the shooting.
Robertson denied that he meant to shoot Hodges. He said he did not even aim at him. "I just took it and pointed at his direction, and started shooting," he said.
Updike questioned how he was able to hit Hodges with such deadly accuracy to the chest when he wasn't aiming at him. "Were your eyes opened?" he asked in mockery.
Updike called on Sweeney to put Robertson behind bars for at least a portion of the maximum 22 years, and he asked that, upon his release, Robertson stay out of trouble or face finishing the rest of his prison term.
Sweeney chose to punish Robertson as an adult, but sentenced him to serve his 12-year prison time in the state's program for youthful offenders. He will not be sent into the general prison population.
"He doesn't belong there," Sweeney said.
Robertson could be eligible for parole in two years.
Dressed in blue jeans and a grey-and-blue striped shirt buttoned to the neck, Robertson stood quietly when Sweeney sentenced him. His mother, father and girlfriend listened from one row back, along with about a dozen family members and friends. There was none of the loud sobbing heard when his guilty verdict was read in February.
Sweeney ordered Robertson to report back to the Bedford County Jail on Tuesday, giving him the weekend at home before beginning his sentence.
Garrett said afterwards that a decision on whether to appeal the case had not been made. He said he was disappointed by the sentence, but not surprised.
Updike said he was satisfied by Sweeney's decision.
Peggy Hodges also was satisfied. "He took everything - my husband, the finances, the whole thing," she said. "I didn't even get to say goodbye."
Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.