NEW CUMBERLAND - When police responded to a call about shots being fired at a New Cumberland apartment on March 22, 2008, they saw Billy Rice walking away from the residence.
He had no shoes on, and officers noticed blood on his socks and hands.
Inside the house, they discovered Sherry Paris on the living room floor - dead of an apparent gunshot wound to the head.
Article Photos
Photos by Fred Connors
Remembering their slain daughter and sister, Sherry Paris, are, from left, Teresa Powell, Wanda Showalter and Barbara Settle. The women believe the man who killed Paris should spend more time in prison.
At a neighbor's home, police found the couple's toddler daughter covered with blood splatter.
The presence of a soiled diaper near the victim's body led police to speculate that Paris died while changing her daughter's diaper. A police report noted Rice, who appeared to be intoxicated when police arrived at the scene, told investigators Paris had taken her own life by placing a .40-caliber handgun to her head and pulling the trigger.
Compelling crime scene evidence and an alleged confession led police to charge the 28-year-old Rice with first-degree murder and wanton endangerment involving a firearm.
During the next year, however, as the case wound through the legal system, Hancock County Prosecutor James W. Davis Jr. found himself struggling to keep the charges against Rice more serious than a misdemeanor involuntary manslaughter.
The case also gave the victim's family an unexpected lesson on crime and punishment in the real world.
A year after Paris' death, on March 25, Rice entered a "Kennedy plea" to voluntary manslaughter and an unconditional guilty plea to wanton endangerment with a firearm. A Kennedy plea is offered when a defendant does not admit to the crime but agrees to accept responsibility because a jury conviction could produce catastrophic results.
Hancock County Circuit Judge Martin Gaughan, who accepted the binding plea agreement, sentenced Rice to 15 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter and to five years in prison for wanton endangerment with a firearm. He ordered the sentences be served consecutively for an effective term of 20 years in prison.
But Paris' family learned that in West Virginia, a 20-year sentence does not mean 20 years behind bars.
Gaughan suspended the five-year sentence in lieu of two years probation. And under West Virginia law, Rice will be eligible for parole after serving one-third of the 15-year sentence.
If parole is denied, he could be released in as few as six and a half years.
Paris' family - her mother, Wanda Showalter, and two sisters, Teresa Powell and Barbara Settle - knew Davis and defense attorneys were working on a plea agreement, but they claim Davis did not tell them about the reduced years resulting from prison sentencing and parole guidelines.
"We knew they were making a plea agreement, but we were led to believe that he (Rice) would serve the full 20 years," Powell said. "Besides that, we never agreed to probation for the wanton endangerment charge."
She said Davis told the family a guilty plea would result in Rice serving the full 20 years.
"We were there when he was talking to the defense attorneys," Powell said. "He came back into the room and told us he had to settle for two years probation on the wanton endangerment charge. I told him to go back in and tell them we do not agree, but he declined to do so."
She said the final plea agreement did not prohibit Rice from applying for parole after serving one-third of his sentence.
Showalter expressed equal disappointment.
"Every time we met with law enforcement officials, (Rice's sentence) kept going down and going down and going down."
Settle added, "I feel like we were bamboozled. There is no justice for Sherry Paris. People need to know that this type of thing goes on and beware if they are ever involved with the Hancock County court system."
Family members also criticized Gaughan for not allowing them to read victim impact statements during Rice's sentencing hearing.
Gaughan said he had previously read the victim impact statements and did not allow them to be read in court because they contained personal attacks against Rice rather than saying how the crime impacted their lives.
Concerning his decision to accept the plea, Gaughan said, "I knew they (the family) were not happy with the plea agreement, but none of them said in open court for me to not accept it. I followed the recommendations of the attorneys because I knew the prosecutor had a bad case."
Settle said family members did not have an opportunity to comment in open court.
"He did not ask us whether or not he should accept the plea," she said.
Davis said the plea came after he realized the prosecution's case would be weakened by crime scene evidence being suppressed from the jury. Investigators on the scene failed to get a search warrant before gathering evidence. Some evidence found during the search helped to elicit a confession from Rice, but neither the evidence nor the confession could be used in court in the absence of a search warrant.
"I told investigators at the scene that this was not a first-degree murder case because there was no proof of premeditation or other elements required in the first-degree murder statute," Davis said. "Second-degree murder would be hard to prove because we had only circumstantial evidence with which to prove malice, evil intent or a crime of passion."
That left Davis with possible charges of felony voluntary manslaughter or misdemeanor involuntary manslaughter.
"A conviction on involuntary manslaughter could result in one year in jail. Wanton endangerment could bring five years with parole eligibility in one and one-quarter years and could be discharged in two and one-half years. The risk was too great," he said.
Davis said he agreed to suspension of the wanton endangerment sentence so he could make the voluntary manslaughter charge stick.
"The family didn't like it. I didn't like it. I felt like I was getting the best I could get," he said.
Wheeling attorneys Gerald Jacovetty and Robert G. McCoid defended Rice.
"The defense team in this matter is certainly very sympathetic to the family of Sherry Paris, and we cannot fathom the unimaginable pain that they have endured through the loss of their beloved daughter and sister," McCoid said. "We understand, as well, how emotion can cloud reason.
"However, the facts in this case clearly establish that the shooting death of Sherry Paris by Charles Rice was accidental. All of the forensic evidence, fully sustained by the opinions of a highly qualified forensic pathologist, a gun discharge expert and a forensic death scene reconstructionist, indicates that Mr. Rice accidentally fired the gun while in an intoxicated condition, meaning that he is factually guilty of nothing more than involuntary manslaughter.
"His decision to enter a Kennedy plea to the offense of voluntary manslaughter, a greater offense with a stiffer penalty than that of which he would likely have been convicted, was the product of his fully informed decision to accept responsibility for his actions and eliminate the ordeal of a trial, including any uncertainty as to its outcome," McCoid added. "While jurors frequently get it right, they sometimes get it wrong, and given the high stakes in this prosecution, he elected to take the sure thing. Mr. Rice's decision, however, does not mitigate against the fact that he is guilty of nothing more than criminal negligence."
Settle takes exception to McCoid's comment.
"He only feels that he had a solid case because he had important evidence suppressed," she said. "There is nothing cloudy about our reasoning. That comment insults my intelligence. He admitted in a letter to the prosecutor that there had been a history of violence between Sherry and Rice, but he contended there was not enough physical evidence of Rice's violent conduct to support a claim of intentional shooting."