Jurors continued deliberations today on the guilt or innocence of William Lamar Hinson III, accused of murdering Georgia tourist Khanh Lam by striking him over the head during a fight in Garberville in July 2015.

Hinson

The eight-man, four-woman jury has four options: acquittal, involuntary manslaughter, voluntary manslaughter and second-degree murder. In closing arguments Thursday, Deputy District Attorney Roger Rees said Lam’s death was “nothing less than murder.” And Public Defender Marek Reavis said Hinson wasn’t even there.

Lam, 37, was on his way to Southern California but stopped in Garberville because his truck broke down. About noon on July 18, 2015, he was looking for his lost dog near the town square. Lam had ingested a potentially lethal amount of methamphetamine, and for unknown reasons he approached a family sitting in a van parked near the town square.

According to several witnesses, Lam tried to take a little girl out of the back of the van, and when the child’s mother attempted to stop him he punched her repeatedly in the face.

Hinson, 41, was one of a group of people who ran to the van, with Hinson admitting he slapped or hit Lam twice before Lam kicked him in the groin and he went down. Several people, including Ray Preschern, pursued Lam into an alley. There he was first attacked by the van’s driver, who he knocked down with a stepladder. Then he fought with Preschern, who testified he knocked Lam out. Lam was lying face-down over a guard rail when Hinson allegedly struck him in the head with a piece of wood.

Reavis told the jury they should be skeptical of witnesses who testified it was Hinson who delivered the fatal blows.

“Do they inspire confidence?” he asked the jurors. “Do they make you certain of Mr. Hinson’s guilt?”

He pointed to discrepancies in their stories, as in what Hinson wore and whether his hair (he is balding) was in a 4-inch ponytail. He also described Lam’s behavior as “vile, not surprising considering the amount of meth he was on.”

Both Preschern and prosecution witness Reginald “Green Man” Newlin freely admitted they have memory problems. At one time Preschern said there was no-one on the other side of the guard rail. Now he says there were two people, and he’s 99 percent sure one was Hinson.

 He based that on what the man standing there was wearing, but it turns out Hinson was not dressed as he described.

“Now he’s saying he assumed it was Bill because Bill was wearing clothes he wasn’t wearing,” Reavis said.

The two people who positively identified Hinson as the killer were “Green Man” Newlin and Kenneth “Kenny” Hunt. They offered two completely different stories, with Green Man saying he watched in horror as Hinson used a golf-club swing to smash the fallen Lam over the head. Hunt, a witness quite hostile to the prosecution, also said Hinson hit Lam with a piece of wood. But Hunt said Lam, enraged, was charging at Hinson “like a bull” and Hinson was defending himself.

As for Green Man, he mistakenly believed the van in question remained parked at the town square for weeks. (The people in the van left town shortly after the incident).  He also thought Hinson was wearing nothing but shorts and shoes, when video surveillance shows him in long pants and a shirt.

At one point during his testimony, Green Man said “Sitting here today, I don’t recall much of what happened.”

“How certain are you of the testimony that Green Man gave you?” Reavis asked the jury.

As for Hinson, who changed his account after hearing statements he made during phone calls at the jail, his testimony is that he slapped or hit Lam twice. Then Lam kicked him in the groin, where he has a hernia, and he fell to the ground. He had heard Lam saying something about having or getting a gun, so he retrieved his dog and backpack and left the town square.

Prosecutor Rees, in his closing argument, said witnesses presented “a consistent story told from different viewpoints.”

Despite the lie Hinson “has come up with and settled on,” Rees said, the fact is that three people testified he was the culprit

“He’s got three people saying he killed someone and he doesn’t want you to believe it,” Rees told the jury.

All of those people knew Hinson, the prosecutor said, and “Who cares?”  about whether they can correctly recall his clothing or hairstyle.

“Ray Preschern knows what the defendant looks like. Green Man knows what the defendant looks like. Kenny Hunt knows what the defendant looks like.”

Speaking of Hunt, Rees reminded the jury that during Hunt’s testimony he said the crime wasn’t worth life in prison, and when he left the courtroom he said “Best of luck to you, Bill.”

“Does that sound like somebody who’s going to come in here and lie?” 

Rees noted that Hunt was so hostile on the witness stand, “a couple of times I thought I was going to get punched.” Yet Hunt admitted he saw Hinson strike Lam on the head.
As for Preschern, he could have simply lied and said the killer was Hinson, but instead said he was 99 percent sure it was Hinson standing there.

“He won’t say 100 percent,” Rees said.

Self-defense or a “heat of passion” defense are not factors in this case, Rees said.  

“It doesn’t apply when he’s been chased down by a group of people,” he said. “It doesn’t apply when he’s surrounded. You can’t hit Lam in the head with a board when the kidnapping occurred 200 yards away. The kidnap was already over.”

Lam was unarmed and surrounded, Rees said, and there was no excuse for using deadly force.

“The use of that board was too much force. It was not reasonable and was not justified.”

Lam’s skull was fractured in several places and his kidney was lacerated. The doctor who performed the autopsy said the kidney injury and any one of the skull fractures were potentially lethal.

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