Officer's wife: Hill looked like a 'normal' guy
Convicted killer claimed innocence
By Zane Wilson - The Sun News
Sat, Mar. 20, 2004   

Sally Guerry recalled Thursday her shock the first time she saw David Clayton Hill, the man accused of shooting her husband to death; shock that he seemed so ordinary.

Guerry, who was left a widow with two fatherless boys, expected to see a monster, someone whose appearance would match the monstrosity of the deed.

"I expected him to look differently," she said. "He looked so normal, just like me or you."

No history of violence

Nothing about Hill's past pointed toward a crime as violent as shooting Georgetown police Maj. Spencer Guerry in the face after the officer pulled him over for having an expired Colorado tag.

Hill, who was 29 at the time, had a record of multiple traffic violations, some petty crimes and marijuana offenses. But he had never been violent, police and family members said.

He did time in prison for marijuana possession in the late 1980s, and friends told police Hill had said he would kill before he went back to prison.

Other than that, Hill was described as a life-loving young man who had a hard time managing his money, hopped jobs and dealt pot in small amounts to support his habit.

He liked to cook and listen to music, his family said.

His mother said he never seemed to have money. She and his father made most of his car payments and gave him their old house to live in. Even so, his parents often had to pay the utility bills, Gracie Hill told The Sun News 10 years ago.

Gracie Hill died Jan. 11. She and her husband, Harry Hill, who died in 1999, adopted David Hill when he was a baby. In a strange twist of fate, investigators found David Hill's birth family when researching his background after his arrest. His birth mother had recently died after 30 years of searching for him.

When Hill was charged with killing Guerry, many people who knew Hill's past said it just didn't seem like something he would do. What would make someone like that suddenly be so bold as to shoot a high-ranking cop point-blank with a 9 mm pistol simply because he got caught with an expired license plate and was driving without a license?

His story, since the time of his trial, is that he didn't.

'Fallen angel' defense

Myrtle Beach attorney Jim Hills was one of David Hill's defense attorneys at his trial in Georgetown in 1995. He shocked the packed courtroom with his opening statement that Hill did not kill Guerry.

The officer was killed by "a fallen angel," a disgraced former state police officer who was fired for drunken driving and then turned to drug-dealing, Hills said.

The former cop, Johnny Cribb, was in Hill's car holding a gun on him, forcing him to drive somewhere, when Guerry pulled them over, Hills said. And when Guerry bent down to look inside the car, Cribb shot him to avoid being implicated in the drug deal, the story went.

Cribb died in 1999. He always claimed the story was preposterous. When it came up at Hill's trial, the Georgetown County Sheriff's Office quickly investigated and found phone records that showed the phone at Cribb's house was in use at the time of Guerry's shooting.

Cribb was fired after he crashed his State Law Enforcement Division car into another car. He had been speeding and was driving under the influence.

Three women in the other car were badly hurt. Cribb left the scene to get some cigarettes and watched the police and ambulances cleaning up the wreck.

He was later convicted of driving under the influence and sentenced to three years in prison for felony DUI. But he never served. The case was later overturned for improper handling of blood evidence.

Hill and Cribb did know each other. Cribb had once arrested Hill when Cribb was a Georgetown County sheriff's deputy.

In Hill's telling of the tale, he had done a drug deal with Cribb and owed him some money. He thought Cribb was going to make him drive to his house to see if there was any of his money there.

Steve Blankenship, the only witness Hill could claim to seeing Cribb getting in Hill's car the afternoon of March 7 in Pawleys Island, had been murdered three months before the trial.

When Hill testified, Solicitor Ralph Wilson attacked holes in the story that didn't match up, such as the line of fire Cribb would have taken and the way the bullet entered Guerry's face.

There also was the matter of why Cribb would have let Hill go, giving him his gun back after the shooting, Wilson told the jury, if Hill had just witnessed Cribb killing Guerry.

Then there was the matter of the murder weapon. It was not found despite an intense search, and Hill would not say where it was. Wilson called attention to that at the trial. Hill replied it was out in the woods near his house, buried.

In 1999, the gun was found by a man who lived not far from Hill's house. It was shoved into the dirt under a propane gas tank. Ballistics tests confirmed it was the gun that killed Guerry, but no fingerprints could be detected on it.

Jury doesn't believe tale

Hill told an imaginative tale concocted after the only possible witness was murdered and never mentioned it until the trial, Wilson said.

Hill replied that he first told his story a month before Blankenship was murdered and had never mentioned it before then because "I didn't know who to trust."

"You weren't going back to jail and [Guerry] was the only thing standing between you and jail," Wilson said.

To the end, Hill maintained that story. Hills would not say Thursday if he believes the story.

"You go with the defense the defendant gives you," Hills said.

Defense attorneys had Hill examined while he was under truth serum. The doctor said, "He was either telling the truth or believed he was telling the truth," Hills recalled.

The jury didn't believe it. They spent only 45 minutes deliberating after more than a week of listening to the case. They spent 35 minutes deciding on the death sentence.

Hill maintained his story during his appeals. One point of appeal was the trial judge's denial of a delay, so a tape expert could arrive and testify.

Hill's attorneys said the garbled transmission that was Guerry's last words could have been "they shot me." Others said it also could have sounded like, "David shot me," and some thought Guerry was trying to call "six nine one," the call numbers of city dispatch.

The haunting tape was played in the courtroom while the jury was not present.

Even with the disagreement, Hills said Thursday that if the expert could have testified, or if the jury had been allowed to hear the tape, "it could have made a difference," it could have raised some reasonable doubt that could have spared Hill the death sentence.

'Good in everybody'

Hills has defended four other clients in death penalty cases, and Hill is the only one who got the death penalty. He has kept up with Hill through Hill's newsletters and occasional personal letters.

"I feel for him," Hills said. "I think he's a better person now."

He was sad to see Hill's execution approaching and felt sad for everybody connected with it, he said.

"When you're defending somebody, you're always looking for the good in your client, and you're always going to find it, because there is good in everybody," Hills said.

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Convicted Police Killer Executed in S.C.
By JEFFREY COLLINS
Associated Press Writer
Saturday March 20, 2004

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - A convicted police killer was executed by lethal injection Friday, hours after he lost his final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming the way South Carolina puts inmates to death is unusually cruel.

David Clayton Hill, 39, recited a Bible verse, looked at witnesses and then gazed upward as he received a lethal injection. He died less than two minutes after the infusion.

Earlier Friday, the high court voted 5-4 to let the execution proceed, erasing a reprieve Hill received two weeks ago.

A federal judge had blocked the execution to give Hill's lawyers time to argue that the way South Carolina performs lethal injections is cruel and unusual punishment, and a federal appeals court upheld the delay this week.

Hill's lawyers argued South Carolina doesn't sedate inmates enough to render them unconscious before administering chemicals to paralyze muscles, stop respirations and still the heart.

The state attorney general's office appealed to the Supreme Court. Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer objected to the high court's decision to lift the stay.

Hill was convicted of killing Police Maj. Spencer Guerry, an officer who was shot in the head during a traffic stop 10 years ago. Hill's identification card and registration were found in Guerry's shirt pocket.

The Supreme Court has clashed 5-4 in a series of last-minute death row appeals since January, repeatedly rejecting claims that executions should be on hold while the court considers an Alabama death case.

Justices are taking up an appeal later this month from David Larry Nelson, a death row inmate who contends that his collapsed veins would make his execution by lethal injection unconstitutionally cruel. The court is addressing a technical question of whether it's too late for Nelson to pursue the claim.