“It was the letters” that cinched guilty verdicts Thursday against Stacy Raymond Potts of LaGrange, one juror said afterward.
Potts, 28, was convicted in the robbery and severe beating of a Kia Motors construction worker in September at West Point Motel on U.S. 29.
Baldwin sentenced him to an automatic life sentence for armed robbery because he had three previous felony convictions: two for burglary and one for forgery.
He received a consecutive 20 years for aggravated assault and concurrent 20-year sentences for two burglaries: one in the 100 block of Mallory Drive and the other at a residence across from the motel.
Potts declined to take the witness stand in his own defense, but proclaimed his innocence at sentencing.
The victim, Robert Wheatley, 54, of Newell, W.Va., suffered permanent brain injuries and will spend the rest of his life in a nursing home, said chief assistant district attorney Monique Kirby and sheriff’s investigator Sgt. Kelli Ellington.
“He’d have a better quality of life if he was dead,” Kirby told the 12-member jury in closing arguments.
Kirby had wanted to introduce only highlighted portions of 13 letters that Potts sent to his 18-year-old girlfriend, Alesha Dawson of West Point, at the county jail after they were both arrested. But Potts - against the advice of public defender Jeff Shattuck - insisted the jury hear the entire letters, which contained a lot of racial slurs, extremely graphic sexual imagery and instructions for Dawson to keep quiet because “they don’t have no evidence against us.”
“Do you think those letters were written by someone who was innocent?” Kirby asked the jurors. “… It’s not what you say when you’re in jail for armed robbery and aggravated assault, and you didn’t do it. It might as well have been an admission of guilt.”
Dawson pleaded guilty in April to the two burglary counts, but the judge withheld sentencing until after her testimony in Potts’ trial. Kirby said she would recommend Dawson receive one year in prison and seven years’ probation.
Potts had “like a sick, toxic relationship with her,” Kirby told jury. “He talked to her like a piece of trash and pimped her out. He used her like he uses all these other girls on the street and pimps her out.”
“He’s a threat to the community, there’s no doubt about that,” she said.
Shattuck reminded jurors they were “not here to decide the issue of pimping girls or getting cocaine to smoke.”
He pointed to the lack of physical evidence such as fingerprints or DNA in the Wheatley case, adding that Dawson’s testimony was the only link to his client. She first denied Potts had anything to do with the assault, but later told investigators that Potts had admitted striking Wheatley and stealing $280 from him.
Shattuck pointed to alleged discrepancies in Dawson’s statement, such as her claim that she took a shower in the motel for 30 to 45 minutes while the assault and robbery was taking place in the adjoining motel room.
“Unless you like cold showers, you’re not going to shower for 30 minutes,” Shattuck said.
Blood was found throughout Wheatley’s motel room, but Dawson said Potts didn’t have any blood on him after the assault and forensic specialists didn’t find any blood in the couple’s room.
“How could he have done that without any type of blood on him?” Shattuck said. “You know why? Because Mr. Potts didn’t do it.”
Kirby said Potts put a blanket over the victim’s head to avoid getting blood on him when he bashed his skull with a car jack.
Shattuck suggested Dawson committed the assault with the help of a man she had played basketball with at the motel. She had gotten in the shower to wash the blood off, he said.
“She fooled this investigator (Ellington), she fooled the DA’s office and now she’s trying to fool you,” he told the jury.
Shattuck said he will file a motion for a new trial, adding, “I felt the decision was against the weight of the evidence.”
Joel Martin can be reached at jmartin@ lagrangenews.com or (706) 884-7311, Ext. 235.
Post a Comment
