James W. Hutchins

James William Hutchins (March 26, 1929 – March 16, 1984) was an American man convicted of the murders of three law enforcement officers in North Carolina. Hutchins was executed on March 16, 1984, by the state of North Carolina at Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina by lethal injection. Hutchins became the first person to be executed in North Carolina since 1977 when the death penalty was reinstated. The murders inspired a motion picture and prompted statewide changes in law enforcement protocol for the interagency reporting of officer murders and radio cross-communication between local agencies and the North Carolina State Highway Patrol.

Personal life[]

Hutchins was born on March 26, 1929, in Rutherford County, North Carolina. At the time of his arrest in 1979, Hutchins was married and had three children. Hutchins worked at various occupations, including as a textile worker and a carpenter.^[2][3] Hutchins served in the US Air Force during the Korean War and was trained as a rifleman. In April 1954, Hutchins was arrested for first-degree murder in New Mexico while AWOL.^[4] The murder charge was reportedly dropped due to insufficient evidence and Hutchins was returned to military custody, where he was discharged for bad conduct.^[5] In December 1966, Hutchins was charged with assault and battery with intent to kill after attacking the husband of his ex-wife.^[4]

The murders on May 31, 1979[]

On the night of May 31, 1979, officers responded to a domestic disturbance call involving Hutchins and his teenage daughter, who was preparing for her high school graduation that evening and making an alcoholic drink for a party afterward. Hutchins attacked his daughter, reportedly for using too much vodka, and attacked other family members who tried to intervene. His daughter fled to a neighbor's house where the sheriff's office was called.^[6]

Rutherford County deputy sheriffs Captain Roy Huskey, 42, and Deputy Owen Messersmith, 58, arrived separately at the Hutchins residence. Hutchins shot Captain Huskey in the head with a high-powered rifle from within his home as the officer exited his patrol car. Deputy Messersmith was dispatched several minutes later to check on the captain, who had not radioed or called in. Upon arriving, Messersmith apparently saw the captain lying beside his vehicle and realized that Huskey had been fatally shot. As he shifted into reverse and started to back away to cover, Hutchins shot Messersmith in the head through the windshield of his patrol car. Immediately after the shootings, Hutchins fled the scene still armed with his high-powered rifle.

A frantic neighbor called the sheriff's office to report that two deputies had been shot in the Hutchins driveway, but the radio dispatcher on duty fainted at the news. A jailer in the jail heard the unattended radio, discovered the dispatcher and began to answer phones while calling an ambulance for the dispatcher. The jailer did not know to notify state highway patrol regional headquarters in Asheville of the situation, delaying the description of the shooter and his vehicle getting to officers. The jailer attending the phones also did not know how to use the then-new North Carolina Statewide Police Information Network computer system, part of the FBI's nationwide National Crime Information Center, which could have enabled fast communications between the agencies in lieu of the overloaded phone lines.

Troopers were thus unaware that two Rutherford County officers had been murdered and that the suspect was at large in his car. Had the SHP dispatch center been alerted, they could have located vehicle registration records on Hutchin's vehicle and issued a description to regional troopers.

North Carolina State Highway Patrol Trooper Robert L. "Pete" Peterson, 37, was stopped at the McDowell-Rutherford county line on US Highway 221. Peterson heard garbled radio traffic on the Rutherford County Sheriff's frequency on his scanner. At that time, local law enforcement and the State Highway Patrol used different radio frequency bands, so troopers often used personally-owned scanners in their patrol cars to monitor both. Peterson drove toward Rutherfordton, asking state highway patrol dispatchers to call the Rutherford County Sheriff's Office and find out what was happening. State highway patrol dispatchers were not able to get through to officials due to the chaos at the Sheriff's Office.

As Peterson entered the Rutherfordton city limits, Hutchins sped past him. Peterson turned and pursued, unaware that the suspect had just murdered two sheriff's deputies. Peterson's last radio transmission to Highway Patrol Headquarter was to give his location and to say the suspect had fled on foot.

Communication between the highway patrol and the sheriff's office was restored, and troopers realized that Peterson may have unknowingly encountered the killer of the deputies. Both on- and off-duty troopers began to speed to his location when he did not check in again. Responding troopers found Peterson slumped by the driver's side of his patrol car suffering from a gunshot wound to the head. His patrol car was stopped on the northbound shoulder of a sharp curve on US 221, a distance behind Hutchins' car which was stopped near the tree line. Peterson's revolver was drawn and had been fired one time. His body position was consistent with using his vehicle's engine block for cover, a standard tactic for troopers.^[7]

Manhunt and arrest[]

James Hutchins was captured in a dense thicket in Rutherford County on June 1, 1979, after a 12-hour search conducted by over 200 local, state and federal law enforcement officers from across western North Carolina and upstate South Carolina.^[7]

The manhunt was depicted in a 1987 feature film, Damon's Law, also known as "The Rutherford County Line." The film, shot on location by North Carolina producer Earl Owensby, portrays Rutherford County Sheriff Damon Huskey hunting for the man who killed his brother, Sheriff's Deputy Roy Huskey.^[8]

Due to the widespread anger of local residents in Rutherford County, Hutchins was jailed the next day in Shelby Cleveland County, North Carolina for his own safety. He was later transferred to the more-secure Buncombe County Jail in Asheville, North Carolina.

Hutchin's triple murder trial[]

As the trial opened on September 17, 1979, Hutchins pleaded not guilty following the prosecutor's demand that he receive the death penalty. Days later, the jury found Hutchins guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder.^[9] The same jury ruled that Hutchins should die in the state's gas chamber. Presiding Judge Donald Smith referred to Hutchins as "the most dangerous man I've ever seen."^[4]

Appeals and execution[]

Superior Court Judge Lacy Thornburg, who would later serve as State Attorney General and as a federal judge, set Hutchins's execution date for October 15, 1981, though further appeals pushed that date back. On September 8, 1983, a new execution date was set for January 13, 1984. On January 6, leading up to his execution, James Hutchins chose lethal injection as his means of execution.

Hutchins was granted a stay of execution based on claims that his trial was prejudiced because jurors opposed to the death penalty were systemically excluded.^[10]

The stay was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled against Hutchins in a 5-4 verdict, with dissenting Justice William Brennan decrying the quick verdict.

"The most disturbing aspect of the court's decision is its indefensible -- and unexplained -- rush to judgment. When a life is at stake, the process that produces this result is surely insensitive, if not ghoulish," Brennan wrote. Justice Thurgood Marshall said he found the "court's haste outrageous."^[11]

Just 40 minutes before his scheduled execution on January 13, the North Carolina State Supreme Court ruled that Hutchins's execution would have to be rescheduled, as state statute requires that a new date of execution must be set whenever a stay of execution is issued and then vacated.^[11]

Hutchins was ultimately executed in North Carolina on March 16, 1984.^[1][12]

Charges of political overtones in the execution[]

Leading up to Hutchins' execution, then-North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt, a Democrat, was locked in a bitter US Senate election bid against conservative icon and incumbent Senator Jesse Helms. Some charged that Hunt used his position as governor to expedite Hutchins' execution to occur prior to the fall election, in order to project himself as a tough on crime conservative democrat.

Hunt did not commute Hutchin's death sentence, saying he found "no basis" to overrule court decisions.^[6] The execution was carried out on March 16, 1984, the first person to be executed in North Carolina since 1961.^[6]

Governor Hunt lost the Senate race to Jesse Helms by a substantial margin, but was re-elected as governor in 1992 and again in 1996 for two more terms. Hunt would later comment that his role in executing Hutchins was a proud moment of his political legacy and that it was the "right thing to do".^[13]

Aftermath and victims' legacy[]

A previous incident similar to the Rutherford County murders occurred in 1975, when North Carolina Highway Patrolman G.T. Davis of Troop "A" was shot to death in downtown Williamston, Martin County. Davis had stopped a car for running a red light at the US 64 and US 17 intersection, unaware that minutes earlier the car's occupants had robbed a bank in Jamesville, 10 miles to the east. Martin County officials had failed to report the robbery and suspects' description to the Highway Patrol. After these incidents, the State Highway Patrol made a concerted effort to have better and timelier communications with local law enforcement agencies.^[7]

Trooper Robert L. "Pete" Peterson was a former US Army and Vietnam veteran who had joined the State Highway Patrol in 1969. He had served as the longest-assigned physical training (PT) instructor in the history of the NC Highway Patrol Training Center, training close to ten trooper cadet classes. In 2016, the North Carolina State Highway Patrol named the physical training field and running track at the agency's training center in Raleigh as "Peterson Field" in honor of Trooper Peterson's legacy as the agency's most famous physical training instructor and in honor of his service. The North Carolina Department of Transportation also dedicated a portion of U.S. 221 in Rutherford County in honor of Trooper Peterson.^[7]

In 2014, two bridges on U.S. 74 were dedicated to Captain Roy Huskey and Deputy Owen Messersmith.^[14]

See also[]

• Capital punishment in North Carolina
• Capital punishment in the United States
• List of people executed in North Carolina

References[]