Posted on 08/13/2005 4:52:25 AM PDT by don-o
COLUMBUS, Ohio - If Jennifer Hyatte stopped during her flight to Ohio this week to read a paper or watch the news, she would have seen her face on front pages and television screens.
Authorities had accused her of murder. With a nationwide manhunt for her and her husband, she must have known she was in a world of trouble.
She switched cars, dyed her hair and lied to a cabbie about her travels.
Still, when Common Pleas Court Judge Jennifer Brunner told her on Friday she could get the death penalty if convicted in Tennessee, she slumped back in her chair.
Her court-appointed lawyer, John Sproat, when asked afterward if she'd been aware of the death penalty risk, said, "I don't think so - probably not."
Hyatte, 31, and her husband, George Hyatte, 34, will stay in an Ohio jail for at least another month as they fight extradition to Tennessee, where they face first-degree murder charges in Tuesday morning's shooting death of correction officer Wayne "Cotton" Morgan, 56, in Kingston.
Brunner set a Sept. 8 hearing date. In the meantime, Gov. Phil Bredesen must issue a warrant to Ohio Gov. Bob Taft for the couple's interstate transfer. Ohio authorities can hold the Hyattes for up to 90 days, and it's up to Tennessee officials to prove to an Ohio judge's satisfaction that the Hyattes are, indeed, the people wanted by authorities in connection with Morgan's slaying.
During a trip to Wartburg for Morgan's funeral three hours after the hearings, Bredesen did not comment on the Hyattes' first court appearance since being arrested at a Columbus motel Wednesday night.
After the back-to-back hearings, which together lasted less than 15 minutes, the former prison nurse and her career criminal husband went back to the Franklin County jail. Brunner refused them bail.
Five deputies escorted Jennifer Hyatte into the courtroom at 10:27 a.m. She limped from the gunshot wound she sustained in her left leg during Tuesday's gun battle at the Roane County Courthouse. She wore green pants and a tan smock.
A mother of three who doesn't have a criminal record, Hyatte appeared dazed, her wide eyes shifting from the judge to the journalists sitting in the jury box. Shackled around her waist and ankles, she held her cuffed hands before her chest in an attitude of prayer.
After Brunner explained the extradition process, Jennifer Hyatte talked briefly with her lawyer before returning to her cell.
A few minutes later, the deputies returned with George Hyatte. A slightly built man with a history of sometimes-violent escapes, he, too, was shackled at the waist and ankles. He wore two sets of handcuffs and complained about the discomfort when he entered.
At first, the agitated Hyatte argued with his attorney, public defender Robert Essex, and told Brunner he wanted to waive his right to an extradition hearing.
"I don't want to leave without her," he said. "I don't want to. I don't want to."
However, upon learning from his lawyer that his wife had opted to fight extradition, he changed his mind.
"Whatever my wife did, that's what I want to do," he said.
Brunner said the in-court exchange added an unusual twist to the already rare decision to fight extradition.
"That's the first time in 4 1/2 years I've seen a dialogue on extradition between an attorney and his client in the courtroom," Brunner said afterward.
Authorities allege Jennifer Hyatte shot Morgan as the 28-year veteran prison guard and a partner were escorting her husband out of the Roane County Courthouse following a hearing on an aggravated burglary charge.
According to a complaint filed by the lead investigator in Roane County General Sessions Court, George Hyatte yelled at the defendant to shoot Morgan. She did, Kingston Police Department Investigator Randy Heidle wrote, before exchanging shots with the other correction officer, Larry Harris.
Though wounded in the gunfight, Jennifer Hyatte allegedly drove her husband to a nearby Subway sandwich shop, where they abandoned her Ford Explorer in favor of a gold Chevrolet minivan reported stolen from one of her patients in Hendersonville, Tenn.
About four hours later they stopped at a Lowe's in the Cincinnati suburb of Florence, Ky., where they bought a hacksaw, apparently to cut off his shackles. They rented a room in the Econo Lodge about a mile away in the adjacent town of Erlanger.
After spending the night in Erlanger, the couple took a $185 cab ride to Columbus, where they checked into America's Best Value Inn. Once settled in, they ordered Mexican food and smoked Marlboros.
Meanwhile, authorities in Kentucky had found the gold minivan and the cab driver had reported his unusual passengers, who told him they had wrecked their car while going to an Amway convention, to police.
A hastily formed task force of U.S. marshals and Columbus Police Department SWAT team members converged on the motel. Deputy U.S. Marshal Nikki Ralston phoned room 236B and convinced a weary Jennifer Hyatte to surrender.
Once in custody, she told Ralston she thought the justice system was unfair and didn't want more time added to her husband's already lengthy sentence.
George Hyatte, who gave up immediately after she did, has served two years of a 35-year sentence for aggravated assault and aggravated burglary. Minutes before his escape in Kingston he had pleaded guilty to another burglary.
Ralston said Jennifer Hyatte was "very apologetic" during their conversation before a trip to the hospital for treatment of the gunshot wound.
"She didn't want anybody to get hurt," Ralston said. "She just wanted to be with him."
The Hyattes' flight captivated a nation for a few days and left its mark on communities in three states.
In Wartburg, a family buried a husband and father. Law enforcement officers from as far away as Canada paid their respects to a fallen brother.
The television trucks are gone from Kingston, and people again are going to the courthouse to renew their license tags and pay property taxes.
At the Econo Lodge in Erlanger, the only place the Hyattes spent an entire night together since George Hyatte went back to prison in 2003, the staff on Friday cleaned up room 111.
The Hyattes left behind four bags of chips, three cans of Pepsi, two packs of cherry turnovers and a box of Buffalo chicken wings.
On one of the beds sat a good-as-new teddy bear, about 3 feet tall with shaggy, cinnamon fur and a plaid bow around its neck. It looks like just the kind of present someone would give a sweetheart at a county fair in a more innocent time.
What the hell is this? Is this what passes for journalism these days? I suspect the writers of this piece wouldn't be nearly so sympathetic to the the perps if they murdered someone in their own family. But then again, maybe they would.
I think that's more the "trailer-park white trash" do.
Sounds like she's on the hot seat.
Inject her!
Yep. I'd face the death penelty for a hostess cherry pie.
Sorry, honey, but what do you think might happen when you fire a gun at someone. What did you think the gun shot, marshmallows??
It's so easy to be sorry when you get caught!!
How can an escaped convict fight extradition back to his place of incarceration?
I would like to see fewer state legislatures thumbing their collective noses at the Constitutional provision of "equal protection under the law." I'm not a big fan of protected classes whether they're wearing blue or lavender.
One month to trial. One appeal. Execution the next day.
I don't mind this solution, but it should be applied in all aggravated murder convictions... not just those where the victim is a special class.
This is a case where the death penalty is the only rational option. To do otherwise is to invite other lunatics to do the same thing.
Perhaps, if one more verdict is added to the gamut: Guilty as Hell.
I have posted many times that the man who tried to assassinate Franklin Roosevelt was tried & executed in 37 days. He killed the mayor of Chicago (Anton Cermak) who was in the automobile.
Call me jaded, but most perps likely to try a crime this lurid will not care. Sure they'll die but what, after putting several hundred miles between themselves and the Oppressor?
Side by side like that, they look like twins separated at birth-suppose their marriage was incestious?
Surely, as a prison nurse, she'd have at least a passing knowledge of how the law views a cop-killer. Maybe she thought her bad haircut would generate sympathy from the judge?
Mugshots make everyeone look alike. 21 is more interesting.
The truly scary part is, she already had children before him, which means more than one man found her attractive enough to do the horizontal mambo with...
Maybe so, but if they die, they only do it once.
Thank God there is not a stupidity defense.
Yes - and it needs to be swiftly applied. Say tonight?
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