ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 3, 1996 TAG: 9611040015
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
WHEN CLIFF DICKER was killed, his family got a crash course in how victims are treated in the criminal justice system.
When Karla Turman's boss told her that her husband and a policeman were downstairs, her first thought was that something had happened to their 4 1/2-year-old daughter.
Then she saw the state police cruiser through a window in the Hollins College development office, where she is a database coordinator.
"My father's a police officer," she recalls telling her boss. "I knew before I even hit the bottom of the steps what had happened."
She was right. Her father, Wythe County Deputy Sheriff Cliff Dicker, 58, had been shot and killed by a 15-year-old Wytheville boy on whom he was serving papers.
That was Dec. 6, 1994. Since then, Turman and her family have had a crash course in Virginia's criminal justice system.
They find it lacking.
"It was a learning experience," said Turman, who lives in Roanoke. "I've never had anything like this happen to anybody that I know so I had no idea what was going to go on. I had no idea it was going to take so long."
Christopher Shawn Wheeler, now 17, was sentenced Oct. 21 to 43 years in prison, even though sentencing guidelines called for a range of 11 years to 22 years and four months. Circuit Judge Colin Campbell said he was diverging from the guidelines because of the seriousness of the crime.
Wheeler had a horrendous upbringing, shifted from one relative to another in an atmosphere that included substance abuse, guns and violence. But Turman believes his life might have turned out differently if the legal system had given him more than "a slap on the hand" for the more than a dozen charges he had faced in recent years, and if the social services and education systems had been able to do more.
"I agree that he was raised very poorly and had terrible role models," she said, but "I don't feel one ounce of sadness for Shawn. He chose to kill my dad."
Wheeler, who pleaded guilty, got 40 years for second-degree murder and three years for use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. The commonwealth's attorney's office originally wanted the death penalty for capital murder.
"We were glad he got the maximum that he could get, but we were kind of upset that he was only charged with second-degree murder," Turman said. "We know in 20-some years he'll be walking the streets again."
The crime happened before Virginia's no-parole law went into effect. Under it, Turman said, "at least you would know they would serve their full time, and they would not get out on mandatory parole."
Her greatest hope of seeing things change lies in a victims' rights bill now before Congress.
A Juvenile and Domestic Relations judge ruled Wheeler's confession inadmissable because no guardian was present when he gave it. The prosecution and defense subsequently compromised on an agreement that the remaining evidence indicated at least second-degree murder, and that was what went to Circuit Court when the judge ruled that Wheeler should be tried as an adult.
The confession was admitted in Circuit Court, but Campbell ruled against the prosecution's attempt to reinstate the capital murder charge.
"I feel like they're more lenient than they should be," Turman said. "I know that the defendants have their rights, but I feel that, in this case I feel that we as victims had no rights. We were treated that way."
She said Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Keith Blankenship, who prosecuted the case, was good about asking the family's opinion on his options. "But that didn't mean anything, once it got to court," she said, because their opinion had no influence on court rulings.
Family members were also frustrated by last-minute schedule changes as the case wound its way from Juvenile Court to Circuit Court amid a number of appeals. They would take time off from work to attend a hearing, only to have it postponed. "We did that about 10 times," she said.
"Even though we were all happy that he got the 43 years, we were all surprised," she said. They thought the judge had given Wheeler all the breaks up to that time. "I pictured him giving him something between 15 and 20 years. My stepmother didn't even think he would get that much."
In his confession, Wheeler told authorities that Dicker allowed him to go change out of hunting clothes. He said he shot Dicker with the .22-caliber hunting rifle in his room, then used Dicker's own pistol to fire a fatal shot into his head.
Later, his story changed. He told a parole officer and a psychologist that he had been putting his rifle away and fired only when Dicker yelled at him. He said he was removing the wounded deputy's pistol when it went off accidentally.
Turman said that was "absolutely ludicrous because Dad's gun had an eight-pound trigger on it," meaning it would take that much pressure to pull it. "You can't just pick it up and have it go off. I just cannot believe that it was an accident. I won't believe it."
State Trooper Steve Lowe, a former Wythe deputy, said more like 14 pounds of pressure was needed.
Turman said the family was outraged when Lowe was not allowed to testify to Wheeler's response when he was asked if he had anything to say to the deputy's family: "You can tell the Dicker family to go to hell." She watched Wheeler closely during the two years of legal proceedings and never saw any remorse, she said, and the remark heard by Lowe showed that.
"We went out in the hallway and he told us what Shawn had said," Turman said. "If it was to spare us, we found out, anyway."
"He was just very cheerful, and sometimes he was just very happy that the media was present," Lowe told The Roanoke Times. "I'll be on the news again, won't I?" he quoted Wheeler as saying. "That's been his attitude toward the whole thing."
Turman's mother, Dicker's first wife, died before him. His widow, Beverly, could not bring herself to testify at the sentencing hearing but sent written remarks saying she had lost the most important person in her life in that instant in 1994. She wrote of his closeness to her daughters and his grandchildren. "Putting this all on paper doesn't even touch my feelings of loss," she said.
Jennifer Clark, a stepdaughter, said the shock almost caused her to lose the baby she was carrying - the grandson Dicker would never see. "Cliff stood by me as though I were his real daughter," she said. "I also had to deal with the pain of my daughter who had lost her grandpa and cannot understand why."
Turman also recalled the grandchildren's reactions. "They didn't understand why Poppa would never wake up again. They wanted to lie down and take a nap like Poppa."
Dicker, a 20-year Air Force veteran who served in Vietnam, was one of 157 law enforcement officers nationwide killed in 1994. Six, including Christiansburg Officer Terry Griffith, were from Virginia, which had the seventh-highest total in the nation.
Both her mother and stepmother worried about something having happened to him when he would be late getting home, Turman said, but not her. "Really, no, because around Wytheville you don't hear that. You don't hear of police officers getting killed and all that violent crime."
"All he talked about was his retirement coming up, and how he was going to go hunting and fishing," recalled Doug Tuck, an investigator with the Wythe County Sheriff's Office who was trained by Dicker years ago.
"The thing was, he was supposed to have retired that fall. He had a heart attack," Turman said. "In March of '94, he had to have heart surgery." She said the county did not allow him to retire at that time, even though Sheriff Wayne Pike fought for it. Dicker was approved for disability and given less stressful duties such as serving papers, as he was doing at the Wheeler home.
LENGTH: Long : 136 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: NHAT MEYER/Staff. Karla Turman holds a photograph of herby CNBfather, who was killed almost two years ago while serving papers.
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