A Chattanooga man pleaded no contest on Monday to voluntary manslaughter in a 1981 cold-case murder.
Billy Hawk had previously been convicted in the case in 2016 when a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder in the killing of Johnny Mack Salyer, whose body was found in a barrel floating in Chickamauga Lake. Hawk had been sentenced to life in prison.
But last year, Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Don Poole granted Hawk a new trial after his post-conviction lawyers argued that prosecutors improperly mentioned a polygraph in front of jurors.
While investigators still use polygraphs, they are considered inadmissible in Tennessee courts. In 2017, the Tennessee Criminal Court of Appeals drew a firm line when it sent an unrelated murder conviction back to Chattanooga for a new trial because a judge allowed prosecutors to mention a polygraph test.
Hawk has been free on bond while awaiting re-trial.
On Monday, Poole accepted Hawk’s no-contest plea and sentenced him to five years with credit for time already served, meaning he will not serve jail time from this point forward, according to the Hamilton County District Attorney’s Office.
No contest, or nolo contendere, is different from a guilty plea in that the defendant neither admits nor disputes a charge. A no-contest plea, while not technically a guilty plea, has the same immediate effect as a guilty plea and is often offered as part of a plea agreement.
District Attorney General Neal Pinkston told Judge Don Poole that the victim’s family is OK with the plea agreement and is appreciative of the work done by the office’s cold case unit.
“I am very proud of the Cold Case Unit and all prosecutors who worked on this case to obtain a conviction,” Pinkston said in a statement. “The pursuit of justice and prosecution of an almost 40 year old case is extremely difficult to say the least, but we have now identified and convicted Johnny Mack Salyer’s murderer. His family will no longer wonder.”
THE CASE
Prosecutors in 2016 said a couple living off Rocky Point Road noticed a 55-gallon steel drum floating near their dock on Chickamauga Lake on June 2, 1981. The next day, alarmed by the smell, they called authorities, who found Salyer’s body inside.
Salyer and Hawk had been co-defendants in a pending cocaine distribution case, prosecutors said.
They argued that Hawk shot and killed Salyer, stuffing him in the barrel because he was afraid Salyer planned to testify against him.
Hawk’s defense countered that Salyer was a known addict and dealer who owed thousands of dollars to area drug cartels and they would have had a greater motive to kill him.
Furthermore, they argued, investigators never produced an eyewitness to the crime, never interviewed cartel members, and never produced receipts of Hawk purchasing a barrel.
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