A jury has found Billy Hawk guilty of first degree murder and sentenced him to life in prison.
After beginning deliberations Saturday, jurors remained under guard Sunday and returned today at 9 a.m. They announced their decision around 11 a.m.
All week, prosecutors argued Hawk shot, killed, and stuffed his co-defendant in a pending cocaine distribution case, Johnny Mack Salyer, in a 55-gallon steel drum in summer 1981.
Hawk’s trio of defense attorneys – Bill Speek, Jim Logan, and Jonathan Turner – countered Salyer was a known drug dealer and addict who owed thousands of dollars to area drug cartels. They said Salyer was caught up in the same 1981 arrest as Hawk and his then-girlfriend, Debra Bales, and was never an informant.
Furthermore, they argued, investigators never produced an eyewitness to the crime, never interviewed cartel members and never produced receipts of Hawk purchasing a barrel. Prosecutors instead relied on several witnesses who gave differing statements to investigators over the years, they said.