Tempers flare at hearing on Campbell County murder

RUSTBURG — The body of the victim in a Lynch Station homicide last year may have been mishandled, a doctor testified during a tense hearing Thursday in Campbell County Circuit Court.

Assistant Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Christina Roberts also testified that her signature had been forged on the victim’s death certificate submitted to the Virginia Department of Health.

Roberts testified the handling issues had no impact on her ability to rule 69-year-old Wilbur West died at the hands of another. The forgery, while concerning, also took place well after West’s autopsy, she said.

Thursday’s hearing was set as a time to hash out questions over evidence sharing and pretrial procedures in advance of the capital murder trial of Renauldo Sinclair Oliver, 24, of Gretna.

Oliver faces the possibility of execution if convicted. He is also charged with burglary, robbery and three counts of use of a firearm in commission of a felony.

According to testimony in earlier hearings, investigators accused Oliver of going to West’s Leewood Road home with co-defendant Alphonso Lamont Destin, 21, to rob him. Campbell County Sheriff’s Office Investigator Dwayne Wade testified earlier the men implicated each other: Oliver said Destin pushed West to the ground, which cracked his skull — Destin said Oliver then shot West in the head.

West was found dead just inside the doorway of his home on May 25 when he did not show up for church as usual.

Richmond-based defense lawyer David Baugh loudly and vigorously argued throughout Thursday’s hearing, several times offering to be held in contempt and once threatening to resign his position as a death-penalty attorney for the commonwealth’s public defender office.

Baugh told Judge John Cook his questioning of Roberts, the medical examiner, was essential because he was concerned evidence in the case was subject to a state investigation.

If that were true, he said, he feared witnesses needed to testify at trial to the procedures they used to transfer West’s body might not be able to because they’ll refuse to implicate themselves in their own potentially criminal behavior.

The funeral home company that moved West’s body from his home to the medical examiner’s office in Roanoke used what Roberts called “inappropriate procedures” in putting a plastic bag over the head and wiping bloody gloves on the shirt West had on.

The company was not named during the hearing.

Roberts said she told her staff to contact the funeral home to correct the matter in the future, but said it did not hinder her in her examination. Once bodies are put into body bags, she said, blood often moves around, staining items. She said she uses crime scene photos to distinguish between handling marks and marks left from the subject’s death.

As for the death certificate forgery, she testified she filled out information on the form about West’s cause and manner of death, signed it, then submitted it to Finch & Finch, an Altavista funeral home, where workers were to fill in West’s personal information before filing it with the Department of Health.

“It is not at all uncommon for (funeral home staff) to forge a signature when they make a mistake on the top part they fill out,” Roberts said.

None of the information on the form was changed, Roberts said, but the medical examiner’s signature on the final form submitted was not hers.

She also testified the certificate forgery had no impact on her autopsy findings, although it could have constituted a felony.

Finch & Finch President Robert Finch Jr., contacted after the hearing, denied any forgery, saying this was the first he had heard of the allegation.

“That’s ridiculous,” Finch said. “It couldn’t have happened. It just passes through our hands, that’s all.”

The majority of the issues to have been decided during Thursday’s hearing were put off until May 8.

The judge previously ruled the prosecution was not required to file any written response to defense motions.

Thursday, though, Cook encouraged the prosecutor’s office to file written answers and ruled that if it did, they should be filed a week in advance.