Death row inmate prepares for second murder trial
Jurors for Danny Robbie Hembree’s next first-degree murder trial will come from Burke County.
The convicted killer made an appearance in Gaston County court Thursday morning. Attorneys presented a slew of motions for the upcoming trial set for March 2013.
Hembree, 50, was convicted of killing 17-year-old Heather Catterton in 2009. He was sentenced to death.
Hembree went on trial again in 2011, accused of killing Randi Dean Saldana.
Saldana, 30, was found dead in York, S.C., just two weeks after Catterton’s body was discovered, partially naked in a culvert.
Saldana’s body had been wrapped in bedding and set on fire.
Hembree’s second trial went on for weeks and was in the hands of the defense when Superior Court Judge Beverly Beal declared a mistrial.
Change of venue
Hembree has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder in December 2009, but the case involving Catterton was the only capital case.
The first trial captured regional media attention, showing up on TV and in newspapers before and during the proceedings.
That attention prompted defense attorneys to ask for a change of venue during the Saldana trial.
Beal came up with a compromise – the jury would be selected from Rutherford County then bussed to Gaston for the trial.
Now assigned to the new case, Superior Court Judge James Morgan stayed with the same set up. The only revision is that this jury will come from Burke County.
Morgan expected to hear another round of motions from attorneys in January.
Three women slain
The cases of Catterton and Saldana had a multitude of similarities, according to Gaston County District Attorney Locke Bell.
Their bodies were found near each other. Their deaths happened just weeks apart. They ran with the same crowd.
Hembree also confessed to police that he killed them both in his mother’s house and stored their bodies in a closet in the basement.
Jurors in both trials watched video confessions in which Hembree recalls details about the slayings. But during each trial, Hembree recanted those confessions from the witness stand – saying that he lied to detectives to distract Mecklenburg officers who wanted him for a string of armed robberies.
Segments of the video confessions were redacted during both trials.
Bell wants them to stay that way.
Jurors during the two trials never heard that Hembree is also charged in a third killing – the 1992 death of 30-year-old Deborah Denise Ratchford.
Ratchford’s death was different from the others.
Catterton was suffocated. Saldana was strangled. Ratchford was cut repeatedly and left to die in Oakland Street Cemetery in Gastonia.
But they share one common thread. Hembree told investigators in 2009 that he killed the three women.
No physical evidence ties Hembree to Ratchford’s death, according to Bell so he said there’s no reason to confuse jurors with the topic.
Cummings said admission of such evidence is crucial to his case.
Hembree was convicted of capital murder in November 2011 for suffocating Catterton.
His first-degree murder trial in the death of Saldana began in March of this year and ended in a mistrial in April.
No trial date has been set in Ratchford’s case.
The waters are muddier in the older case, Bell said in court Thursday.
Some of the witnesses have since died.
According to Bell, Hembree brought up Ratchford’s name to police multiple times over the years. Hembree came in contact with detectives often, having spent more than half his life in prison.
When he was interrogated in the other women’s killings in December 2009, Hembree told detectives that he held Ratchford down while James Swanson cut her.
Swanson and Hembree were both charged with murder.
Charges were later dismissed against Swanson.
Bell said in court Thursday that he had to let Swanson go in order to pursue a capital case against Hembree. He said in order to get Swanson he’d have to make a deal with Hembree. That’s a deal he wasn’t willing to make.
“I told law enforcement that I would not make a deal with Mr. Hembree,” Bell said.
http://www.gastongazette.com/death-r...-trial-1.36884
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