handed, hoping buckner would eventually change his mind. the retrial of timothy hennis began on january 27th, 1989, almost four years after the brutal murders of gary eastburn s wife and daughters. the state went into a retrial-a replay of trial 1. but the defense had an entirely different case. we were going to drill him and film him and let him watch it. did you kill these three people? no, i did not kill these people. i have a daughter of my own, and i could not hurt any children at all. did you do this crime? no, i did not. and we felt that if he showed rage or emotion, the jury would say, there, you see, he could get to this point. how does this all make you feel? extremely upset and angry. on cross-examination, the prosecutor confronted hennis with the alleged motive for the murder. the prosecutor says that you lost your cool, and went in
as soon as he returned to fort bragg, hennis was charged with three counts of murder. tim hennis is the only person who has been tried and re-tried for murder three times. i cannot comment why it hasn t happened before. nothing the state does effects what the federal government can do. they can claim it is a different jurisdiction, but it is the state of north carolina to use the army to get to what they wanted to do, plain and simple. but billy richardson now on the sidelines, the court-martial of timothy hennis commenced on march 17th, 2010. the prosecutor s case hinged on the dna results. the sperm found in the vagina is the person who raped and
that the absence of blood on hennis members only jacket was evidence of guilt. they kept saying that there was no blood because he took the jacket to the dry cleaners. the jacket was a damning piece of evidence. and richardson also undercut pat cohen who had i.d. d him leaving the eastburn home. and he videotaped him in a tour of the crime scene. when you start to listen to his story, he is all over the place. and i brought my girlfriend some roses. you brought her some roses on sunday. no, it was candy. no, it was roses. we kept asking, are you sure about that? and he said, well, you are right, now that i am out here, i probably didn t see that. no, no, no i can t see that. but on the witness stand, cone cast aside doubt. he said that the lawyers have been tricking me and pressuring me, and i picked out the right guy. finally, prosecutors presented a surprise witness. a woman who said that two days
physical evidence that was being tested and if any physical evidence came back to tim, he was dead. so we wanted him to come in ahead of time to get him to plead before it came out. but to richardson s surprise, hennis refused to consider a plea deal. he said something that haunted me. he said, they can test whatever they want, i was not in that house, i did not do it, and it is just that simple. and when the lab reports with blood type, footprints and fingerprints came back, they corroborated hennis account. the physical evidence had not matched tim hennis. none of it had. inconclusive or negative. there wasn t a shred of physical evidence that was linking tim to the crime. billy s viewpoint then was i must get this man exonerated because he didn t do it. someone other than my client committed this crime. from that point on, i was totally convinced that he was innocent. but even without physical evidence to link him to the
in his eyes, he just said, them. on april 15th, 2010, the jury sentenced timothy hennis to death. but i feel vindicated for some of the things that you heard when you got a not guilty and the smiles and the smirks that you see from certain people, you damn right, i do, yes, sir, i do, i feel vindicated. tim hennis now sits in solitary confinement in fort leavenworth, kansas. his appeals in the military and federal courts could take decades. i still believe that tim is innocent, and i m not his lawyer right now, so it would be improper for me to sit down and say, all right, tim, did you or didn t you? i m dieing to have that conversation with him. but how can you put a man to death based solely on one piece of evidence? our country was formed on the premise that one person wrongly