Murder suspect to take stand in own defense

   An attorney for Louisiana murder suspect Tommy L. Harrison said the defendant will take the stand Thursday and say how frightened he was of what several witnesses agree was a drunken, profane and racist man who boasted that he was going to “kill that f------ nigger.”
   The 37-year-old defendant is charged with second-degree murder in the beating death of 42-year-old Richard L. “Skip” Marshall during a fight in an alley behind 415 Virginia on Sept. 15, 2008.
   Harrison is black and Marshall was white. The trial, which began Tuesday, was moved to Lincoln Country on a change of venue.
   The prosecution maintains that Harrison killed Marshall without provocation, and one witness said she heard Marshall cry for help while others claim they saw Harrison hitting or standing over the victim.
   The defense argues Harrison only fought back after Marshall came at the defendant with a baseball bat. No one has testified they saw Harrison hit Marshall with the bat.
   Prosecution witness Erin Stewart told the court she was walking on a street near the alley the night of the fight.
   “I heard somebody saying ‘Help me,’” Stewart testified. “I heard Skip saying that.”
   Stewart said that a few minutes later, Harrison ran past her and a friend, but under cross-examination admitted she didn’t witness the fight.
    Defense witness Wendy McCormick testified that two days before the fight, she heard a sober Marshall bragging.
   “Skip told me he was going to kill that f------ nigger, Tommy Harrison,” McCormick said.
   McCormick said she thought Marshall was “kind of serious” and that he was angry because Harrison was dating the daughter of his common-law wife, but under questioning she admitted that Marshall “said a lot of things he never followed through on.”

Harrison’s claims
   Two Louisiana police officers testified that in separate interviews after turning himself in a week after the fight, Harrison told much the same story of what he claims happened.
   Sgt. Jeff Windmiller said he took Harrison back to the scene of the fight. Harrison claimed he heard Marshall utter the words “F--- that nigger” and “I’ll take a bat to his nigger a--,” Windmiller said.
   Windmiller also said Harrison claimed Marshall “came out of the bushes…with a bat.”
   Harrison “said he was hit with a bat by Mr. Marshall,” Windmiller testified. “He said (Marshall) swung a bat at him.”
   The other officer, Capt. Rich Hughes, testified that Harrison said the first swing missed but that a second swing caught him on the right hand.
   Hughes said Harrison claimed he “was trying to get away from” Marshall. Harrison said Marshall swung a third time and missed, spinning around. Harrison told Hughes he then tackled Marshall and Marshall dropped the bat as the two men fell into a fence and began to wrestle.
   A plastic fishbowl, which witnesses said Harrison used to pour water on Marshall in an attempt to revive him, and an aluminum bat were found at the scene.
   Shawn Bailes of the Missouri Highway Patrol Crime Lab said blood found on the bat and Harrison’s T-shirt belonged to Marshall. The lab found partial fingerprints on the bat, but nothing definable.
   A second bat, found later in a toy box at the home of Harrison’s girlfriend after authorities received a tip, was tested but had no human blood or identifiable fingerprints, according to testimony.

Other witnesses
    Also testifying Wednesday were four people who claimed to have witnessed parts of the fight or its immediate aftermath.
   Shonda Ingram, the girlfriend of a neighbor’s son, said she saw Harrison “throwing (Marshall) around like a dummy doll” and that the victim “didn’t move at all.”
   One neighbor said he saw a black man whom he later was told was Tommy Harrison trying to revive Marshall.
   The neighbor, Tim Harrison, who is no relation to the suspect, also heard the defendant “say ‘Here’s your bat, p----, here’s your bat, p----.’”
   Tim Harrison said that when a female who had arrived asked why the defendant had beaten up Marshall, he heard the suspect “say ‘He came at me with a f------ bat.’”
   Tim Harrison, who is certified in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, said the suspect’s attempt to revive Marshall “didn’t appear to be harmful” and that he had found a slight pulse after he and the defendant turned the victim over.
   Jeremy Lanier, the son of neighbor Jim Lanier, testified for the prosecution that Marshall was drunk when he came to the Lanier house and got a baseball bat because he claimed to have been threatened by three black men.
   Lanier said he and Ingram did not call authorities because they didn’t want to get involved.
   The 16-year-old daughter of the woman Harrison was dating told the court that Harrison told her Marshall “had hit him.”
   The teenager said she considered Marshall her grandfather, even though Marshall was verbally abusive when drunk and had a tattoo that read “White Pride.”



   Jim Lanier, who didn’t witness the fight, said he “never saw” Marshall sober and that the victim was “quite drunk” the day of the altercation.
   Lanier, who had let the itinerant Marshall stay in his garage, said Marshall was “very obnoxious” and “trying to pick fights.”
   Marshall was “adamant about using the word nigger so freely,” Jim Lanier testified.

Testimony preview
   Pike County Prosecuting Attorney Mark Fisher called more than a dozen witnesses over two days before closing the state’s case Wednesday.
   Defense attorneys Todd Schulze and Jonathan Hoover had called two people to the stand before Judge Dan Dildine ordered a break for the day.
   Harrison, who was dressed in a business suit and sat between Schulze and Hoover with a Bible on the table, said nothing.
   But in his opening statements to the jury, Schulze gave a preview of what Harrison is likely to offer on the stand Thursday.
   “He’s going to get up and tell his story,” Schulze said.
   Harrison will say he fled because “he was scared and frightened” of retribution from Marshall’s friends and that he was “afraid of how police (would) treat him” because of the color of his skin, Schulze said.
   The all-white jury is made up of seven men, five women and two alternates, one male and one female. A verdict could be handed down as early as Thursday afternoon.
   A conviction could carry a sentence of 10 years to 30 years in prison.