Two statements given to the police by a woman indicted for double homicide will be allowed at trial.
The order allowing the statements was entered by Greenbrier County Circuit Court Judge Robert Richardson on August 6 after a hearing the day before in the case against Terri Lynn Storer.
A Greenbrier County Grand Jury indicted Storer with two counts of murder and Randy Lee Barnhart with two counts of accessory after the fact to murder in August 2020. The charges emerged from a shooting incident near the Greenbrier County and Nicholas County line on Coleman Road in Williamsburg.
“Through investigation it was discovered Jeremiah Thomas, 33, and Jennifer Thomas, 34, had allegedly gotten into an argument over a hunting lease with Randy Barnhart, 45, and Terri Storer, 45,” reads an initial press release from the West Virginia State Police. “During this incident [on November 29, 2019], Jeremiah Thomas and Jennifer Thomas were fatally wounded.”
The two statements in question were both made after the shooting on November 29, 2019. Trooper B.J. Borsman of the West Virginia State Police brought Storer to an ambulance to ask her questions, but she was not placed under arrest. Instead, she was detained and signed a Miranda rights form, allowing police to interview her.
The defense, lead by Counsel Brandon Johnson, argued that because the form did not indicate she was under arrest and because she was “emotional” and “fried” during the interview, it was not given voluntarily.
Opposed to admitting the statement into evidence, Johnson argued “there was no attempt at all to try to determine the mental state of Terri Storer that evening and every opportunity was available. … What she thought she was waving her rights for was a shooting. … It doesn’t count to waving your rights for first-degree murder. … I don’t believe that the state has proved that she gave a voluntary statement.”
During his testimony, Borsman did not give credence to the idea that Storer exhibited enough distress to prevent her from giving a voluntary statement.
“At the time that you arrived, there were people there at the ambulance,” Johnson said. “Did you think that, as a result of what had occurred, that perhaps our client would have been in a state where she wasn’t able to think clearly? … Wouldn’t that have been something you would have wanted to know?”
“If I would have felt the need to do that, I would have done that, sir,” Borsman said.
Johnson later asked “you didn’t think that shooting two people would put someone in a state of confusion?”
“I didn’t know the circumstances of the shooting sir,” Borsman said.
Johnson also requested Richardson listen to the interviews for indications Storer was giving an involuntary statement.
“If you listen to the tape of the two rounds of interviews, judge, … I think you’ll find that throughout the interview, Ms. Storer indicated that her mind was jumbled, that her brain was fried, she was emotional, it’s not just some placid type statement that was given,” Johnson said.
Prosecution Attorney Patrick Via pushed back against this argument, saying “as to the question of her mental state, absent a showing of some type of mental state that would render the statement involuntary, trooper Borsman did anything that an officer could do on scene. He made a judgement as to where she could understand him and was responsive to him. … Frankly, absent some type of indication that Ms. Storer was not even capable of giving the statement, that argument goes to weight anyway. If she was suffering from the throws of having just been involved in a shooting, and therefore makes the statement suspect in terms of it’s substance, not in terms of voluntariness in having given it, … then that’s an argument to place to the jury.”
Though a decision was not made during the hearing, later Richardson would agree with the prosecution.
“At the conclusion of the said hearing, the Court withheld its ruling upon the motion, until it had listened to and considered the audio-recordings of the statement or statements referenced in the State’s Motion,” reads the order. “… The Court has now listened to these audio-recordings, and … finds … that the statements made by the Defendant to S/Tpr. B. J. Borsman of the West Virginia State Police on November 29, 2019, were given freely and voluntarily, that the Defendant was advised of her rights in accordance with Miranda …, that the Court detects nothing in the Defendant’s language, demeanor or tone during her recorded statements to suggest that she was at the time of those statements suffering from any impairment that would have rendered her incapable of voluntarily waiving her Miranda rights; and that no evidence was presented to suggest that the Defendant’s capacity to understand her rights was in any way impaired.”
As a result, the statements will be allowed into evidence at trial.
The defense also filed a motion seeking to have the trial’s COVID-19 precautions, such as jury social distancing, not be in place. Richardson did not rule on the motion, but noted that “people are still dying of COVID-19. The virus is still spreading and it is not my intention to put 12 persons, at this point 50 to 60 percent of whom are likely to be unvaccinated, into a jury box in such close proximity to one another that would be exposing them to the opportunity for the spread of COVID-19. … The motion to continue on the grounds that having the jurors spread out in the gallery is somehow a deprivation of the due process rights of the defendants is not likely to be well received by the court.”
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