Court Martial Attorney – Hennis murder trial delayed again

Court Martial Attorney - Hennis murder trial delayed again

By Drew Brooks -Staff writer

A military judge has agreed to delay the murder trial of Master Sgt. Timothy B. Hennis.

Col. Patrick Parrish set a new trial date of Feb. 22. Hennis’ lawyers had asked that the court martial be postponed.

Parrish also ordered prosecutors to produce two of their witnesses at a hearing in August. The hearing will address whether Parrish should grant defense motions to suppress testimony related to eyewitness identifications.

Hennis, 51, is accused of killing Kathryn Eastburn and two of her daughters May 9, 1985. Their bodies were found inside their home at 367 Summer Hill Road.

The witnesses ordered to testify at the August hearing are Patrick Cone and Lucille Cook. Both picked Hennis out of a photo array used by the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office when it originally investigated the murders.

The court-martial was scheduled to begin Sept. 15. It originally was slated to begin in June 2008.

Earlier this month, defense lawyer Frank Spinner asked Parrish to delay the trial because lawyers needed more time for DNA testing and finding witnesses, and because of time conflicts.

According to lawyers on both sides, the trial should take at least eight weeks and will involve more than 100 witnesses.

The prosecuting lawyers opposed the delay. They said if the trial had to be put off, it should be held in October or February to avoid conflicts with the holiday season.

This will be the third trial for Hennis. He was found guilty in 1986 in a civilian court and sentenced to death. He won an appeal and was acquitted at his second trial in 1989. He resumed his Army career and retired in 2004.

The military pulled Hennis out of retirement in 2006 and charged him again after civilian investigators reported that DNA testing of semen found in Kathryn Eastburn’s body linked Hennis to the crime.

If convicted, Hennis could face the death penalty.

Cone and Cook both testified in previous Hennis trials.

Cone picked Hennis out of six photographs, pegging him as the man he saw outside the Eastburn home the morning after the killings. Cook said she saw Hennis use an ATM card days after the killings. Investigators have said that card belonged to Kathryn Eastburn.

One of Hennis’ lawyers, Maj. Kris Poppe, said there are problems with the way the arrays were presented that biased the witnesses toward picking Hennis. He also said it was possible the witnesses identified Hennis based on pictures in newspapers and not on what they actually saw.

He said information that could possibly identify Hennis was included in one set of photographs.

In another, Hennis was the only one dressed in a dark coat, which Poppe said could have influenced Cone, who said the man he saw leaving the Eastburn home was wearing a dark coat.

Michael Waddington is a court martial lawyer – court martial attorney that defends military personnel worldwide as well as deployed civilian contractors subject to the UCMJ. He defends Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine, Coast Guard, and civilian contractor court martial cases. He has successfully defended military personnel as a court martial lawyer Army Navy Marine & Air Force court martials in Germany, England, San Diego, Norfolk, Jacksonville, Fort Bragg, Fort Jackson, Fort Stewart, Fort Gordon, Italy, Iraq, Kuwait, Korea, Okinawa, Japan, Yokota, and throughout the United States. military-defense-lawyer-recentcases.htm.