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Watson sacked by Ga. Supreme Court

A good case for U.S. Supremes exists, attorney says

By JOHN MUNFORD
jmunford@TheCitizenNews.com

James Lamar Watson Jr., convicted in 2002 for murdering his wife Beverley after claiming she disappeared from their east Fayette home on a bitterly cold night in January 1997, will remain in jail for the time being.

A wide-ranging appeal seeking a new trial was turned down by the Georgia Supreme Court in a unanimous opinion published Monday morning.

The court upheld the verdict of a Fulton County jury, which heard the case because Beverley Watson’s remains were found in a wooded area of south Fulton County in 1999.

Lead defense attorney Lee Sexton said it is possible Watson may ask the state Supreme Court to reconsider its opinion due to “a lot of factual errors within the opinion.”

An application may also be made for the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case, Sexton said.

“The fat lady has not yet sang,” Sexton said. He added that Watson, now housed in the state prison in Reidsville, would be visited later to determine the next course of action.

Watson’s attorneys were hopeful the court would overturn the decision because several of Beverley Watson’s friends were allowed to testify that she said if she ever turned up missing, her husband would have killed her.

In the appeal, attorneys Lee Sexton and Ricky Morris argued that a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on such “hearsay witnesses” made the friends’ testimony inadmissible.

But the Georgia Supreme Court determined that specific case didn’t come into play because the statements from Beverley Watson’s friends admitted at trial “were not testimonial in nature.”

Sexton argued that the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t define what testimonial evidence was in that case, so this case would be a good chance for the court to do so.

In the opinion published Monday morning, the court determined that the evidence “although primarily circumstantial” was sufficient to support the jury’s guilty verdict.

“Viewing the evidence in a light most favorable to the verdict, the jury could have found that every reasonable hypothesis except Watson’s guilt was excluded,” Justice Hugh P. Thompson wrote in the opinion for the court.

Sexton said he was very surprised at the court’s ruling because he felt the trial was unfair in a number of circumstances.

In the appeal, Sexton argued that Fulton Superior Court Judge T. Jackson Bedford, who oversaw the trial, made inappropriate comments on several occasions during the trial that could have biased the jury against Watson.

In the Supreme Court’s opinion, Justice Thompson noted that one of the comments cited in the appeal was actually a humorous comment by Judge Bedford, who later instructed the jury that the comment shouldn’t “be taken as any kind of comment on the evidence.” None of Judge Bedford’s comments infringed on Watson’s right to a fair trial, the court concluded.

Lt. Col. Bruce Jordan, who has overseen the investigation since Watson reported Beverley missing Jan. 20, 1997, said he wasn’t surprised at the Supreme Court’s ruling.

“I am pleased to see the Georgia Supreme Court has said Watson was guilty,” Jordan said.

Jordan said he was confident that then-Fulton County prosecutor Sheila Ross and Judge Bedford wouldn’t do anything to compromise the case.