jmccann@heraldsun.com; 419-6601
DURHAM — While the jury on Tuesday was deliberating the murder trial of Robert Watson, a deal was worked out between the defendant’s lawyer and the state.
Responding with confidence and clarity to Superior Court Judge Orlando F. Hudson Jr.’s questions about the plea arrangement, Watson confessed to the 2006 killing of Durham car dealer James Morris. Hudson told Watson he’d be serving 10-12½ years for second-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping and common-law robbery.
Watson also faces a murder charge in Alamance County.
Prior to this trial, Watson in 2008 sat before another jury on charges of killing Morris, and that ended with a hung jury, Assistant District Attorney Mitchell Garrell said. A jury’s decision in murder trials must be unanimous to obtain a conviction. With that in doubt this time around, a compromise was worked out.
Watson was looking at 65 years in prison if the jury convicted him of killing Morris. So the plea deal defense lawyer Chris Shella reached with Garrell cushioned Watson’s sentence.
Morris was 77 years old when he was killed. He was found beaten to death inside the office of Growing Motors, his used-car business on Roxboro Road. An autopsy report indicated that Morris’ wrists and legs had been bound, and he suffered broken ribs and fractured facial bones.
“James Morris deserved better than this,” Garrell said during his closing argument. “This defendant brutally beat James Morris to death.”
Hudson after the plea deal told Morris’ daughter, Ginger Atkinson, that she deserved better than what the judicial system put her through with respect to resolving her father’s murder.
“This was a very difficult case for the family,” Hudson said.
Yet Atkinson, sobbing, told Watson that she’s forgiven him, and she explained that God, too, would forgive him for killing her father.
Watson, who’d done prison time for drug trafficking, at one point was Durham’s most-wanted criminal suspect until 2006 when he gave himself up to authorities while in a vacant house on South Driver Street.
