Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Testimony Continues In Trial Of Joe Dansby; Juror Dropped

Expert testimony dominated much of the second week of the Joe Dansby murder trial.

Dansby faces the death penalty if convicted of killing Jeff Lewis, 24, and Malissa Clark, 21, on May 16, 1992.

However, the fourth day of actual testimony began slowly. In fact, one of the jurors, the lone black woman, was removed from the panel after she brought a note from her doctor. But, prior to this, the jury had been admonished and told to pay attention by 8th Judicial Circuit-Chancery Judge Joe Griffin.

This came after one of the jurors had fallen asleep during the trial.

In the afternoon part of the session, though, both sides got down to business.

Former Nevada County Sheriff Abb Morman was on the stand, talking about Dansby's wife Betty Jean.

He said it was a statement from her which helped them find the Marlin .22 caliber rifle believed to be the murder weapon. The rifle was found about 30 feet from shore in 10 to 12 feet of water in a gravel pit off Highway 53.

Morman called a dive team together after getting the information from Dansby's wife and searched for the weapon. The team, he said, consisted of Milton Clark and Joe Thomas from the 8th Judicial District Drug Task Force, Arkansas State Police Sgt. Jack Ursery, Arkadelphia Police officer J.R. Daniel, Brian Daniel with the Hope Police Department, Bobby Barger, then with the HPD, Jeff Neel and Kevin Martin, also with the HPD.

Morman told the court the divers from the HPD and APD actually searched for the weapon on Jan. 25, 1994. He said they were under water about 30 to 45 minutes before Brian Daniel came up with the weapon.

Once the rifle was recovered, it was placed in a large plastic bag, which was also filled with water, and taken to the Arkansas State Crime Lab in Little Rock.

Morman testified to seeing Berwin Monroe, with the crime lab, remove the trigger mechanism, while he (Morman) unloaded the magazine, removing 17 PMC Zapper .22 shells. When Monroe cleaned the barrel, he said, another shell was found, making it a total of 18 cartridges in the rifle.

The serial number on the rifle, 13413351, was matched to the number on a transaction from an Arkadelphia Wal-Mart in 1987 bearing Dansby's name.

Gene Bramblett, one of Dansby's attorneys, went back further than the recovery of the rifle during the cross examination.

He asked Morman when he had arrived at crime scene 1, and was told before noon. Morman said Harley Hillery and Sid Meadows were there, along with one or two others, but he didn't stay. "I had other work to do," he said.

But, he told the court, Hillery had already gathered some evidence from the scene, including the gym shorts bearing the Prescott High School logo and mascot along with the number 21, a pair of pink panties (size 8 as it was later determined), Lewis' checkbook and a pair of sunglasses which belonged to Lewis.

These items, Morman said, were in the trunk of Hillery's patrol car when he arrived.

Morman also identified the truck tire patterns left by Lewis' pickup, saying they were distinctive as they had "figure 8, hexagonal loops."

An attempt to find out which way the vehicle had left the first scene, Morman said, was deterred because it had rained and there were other tracks in the area as well.

Lamar Barham, he said, was the first to find the second scene, with Morman arriving 10 to 15 minutes later. Morman said he was the first person to investigate the scene where the bodies were found.

Bramblett kept asking Morman to go back and forth between the scenes and tell how many people were there at any given time. Morman said after he left the first scene and returned later, there were six or eight there.

He also said he didn't see the Nevada County Coroner's truck at the scene, but later said he saw Toni Beard, the deputy coroner and his secretary, present the second time, along with her husband, Mark, the coroner.

"I didn't stay there long," he said. "I got a plane and did (an aerial) search." The aerial search proved fruitless as nothing was found.

Morman did tell the court the area where Lewis and Clark's bodies were found was an area of the county where drug trafficking occurs, primarily by growers of marijuana.

Morman said he didn't physically pick up any evidence at the second scene, leaving it, instead, for the ASP. He did say he stayed at the scene until the truck was towed away and was one of the last to leave.

He identified several photos, including one of ASP Lt. Finis Duvall holding up a ladies purse. Morman said as far as he knew no one touched the purse at the second scene and no one had reason to.

However, he said the coroner or deputy coroner may have looked inside the truck for some form of identification.

Questioning then turned to the Oct. 19, 1993 search of Dansby's yard and subsequent finding of four spent .22 shells.

Morman said he, Heb Sorrells and Wayne Kisselburg went to Dansby's house that day to serve a seizure warrant and take blood samples.

He said the three of them arrived at the house, with Sorrells and him going around back while Kisselburg knocked on the front door.

There was no response to the knocking by Kisselburg at the front, so Morman knocked on the back door, getting the same response -- none.

He told the court he looked down and found a .22 shell casing between two bricks. "I was just standing there, looked down and found the hull," he said.

A subsequent search of the back yard by Sorrells and him turned up three more casings, with Morman finding all four.

These casings, he said, were placed in his pocket and later given to Kisselburg, who put them in a 35 mm film container.

But, he said, no notes or reports were made of finding the casings at the time. The first report made concerning this incident, Bramblett pointed out to Morman and the jury, was June 7, 1996, almost three years after the casings were found.

Morman, under questioning, agreed it is not normal to wait two-and-a-half years to make a report on a criminal case.

These casings, according to Morman and the report, were turned over to Ursery, who later gave them back to Morman. Morman took them to the crime lab for testing, but this occurred after he had left office and was no longer in law enforcement.

Blood taken from Dansby, who they found at his brother's house down the road when leaving, was turned over to Duvall and taken to the crime lab.

Morman said he didn't know where the casings were after he turned them over to Usery until he got them back and took them to the lab.