Phillips defense seeks strategy & Haymore sentenced to jail time
CRIME BEAT - DOUBLE STORIES ON PAGE THREE
HAYMORE SENTENCED TO JAIL TIME IN 1995 ATTACK
Efrem Haymore appeared at his sentencing in 1st District Court Monday expressing remorse.
“I’m not an animal. I’m a man,” Haymore told District Judge Gordon J. Low. “It’s not who is right, it’s what is right.”
Haymore, 24, a former Utah State University student and football player, pleaded guilty last month to aggravated assault, a third-degree felony, after he hit Jeff Siler with a bottle of barbecue sauce in July 1995 in Logan. Siler had suffered a concussion, a hairline fracture above his eye and required three layers of stitches.
Low sentenced Haymore on Monday to 30 days in the Cache County Jail and up to five years of probation following incarceration.
Haymore is also required to pay almost $10,000 in fines plus over $600 in restitution payments. In addition, Haymore will be required to complete an anger counseling program.
Haymore had also originally been charged with a class B misdemeanor for punching Julie Anderson in the face and knocking her to the ground as he went after Siler outside Anderson’s apartment.
Cache County Attorney Schoot Wyatt had previously agreed to drop the charge for a guilty plea to the felony.
Low asked Haymore Monday why he had fought and how far he would have gone if the fight hadn’t been broken up.
Haymore said he was protecting himself. He said he felt provoked by the fact that Siler had called him a “nigger.”
“I had given that word too much power over me,” Haymore told the judge. “I should have walked away.”
Low counseled Haymore to turn his life around. “You have a great number of things going for you in every regard,” Low said.
PHILLIPS DEFENSE SEEKS STRATEGY
Defense attorneys in the Michael Wayne Phillips murder case want to know by Nov. 1 if prosecutors will seek the death penalty. But at a hearing in the 1st District Court Tuesday, Judge Gordon J. Low found no reason to approve the motion.
Phillips’ lead defense attorney John Caine said the defense needed to know if death will be sought in order to know how to proceed with the case and draw up questions in a jury questionnaire. But Cache County Attorney Scott Wyatt said he saw “nothing positive” from being pressured to make such a decision earlier than necessary.
Prosecutors may seek the death penalty right up until the day the jury decides on a verdict, Low said.
During the hearing, Caine said this type of request had only been used once in Utah that he was aware of and in that particular case the judge had requested the information, not the defense.
Wyatt said the state is still undecided about whether the death penalty will be sought for Phillips if he is found guilty in the stabbing death of 64-year-old [Mormon] LDS seminary administrator Conrad Harward in 1992.
Phillips, a diagnosed schizophrenic, pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the charge of aggravated murder. The trial is scheduled to begin in January.
In another motion, prosecutors objected to an authorization from Phillips allowing the release of his medical information.
Wyatt said that the present authorization was not broad enough; prosecution could only request medical information from physicians who work with Bear River Mental Health Services, Inc., and Logan Regional Hospital.
Low asked Wyatt to draw up a new authorization, to be approved by Caine and then signed by Phillips.