Trial Reconvenes - London, Kentucky - 1/27/97

Whatever can happen probably will happen on Monday (1/27/97) in the strange murder-for-hire trial of Chuck Hayes. London, Kentucky's U.S. District Court recessed Friday (1/17/97) as new information about key prosecution witness Lawrence Myers cast doubt on Myers' credibility and raised questions about the government's case against Hayes.

Claiming that Myers' witness background sheet was "intentionally incomplete," Hayes attorney Gatewood Galbraith asked for a mistrial. The motion was denied by U.S. District Judge Jennifer Coffman who said "the new information appeared to be favorable to Hayes' case" (Lexington Herald-Leader, 1/17/97).

Information not available when Myers testified against Hayes at the beginning of the trial included an extortion felony confession not listed on Myers' FBI rap sheet, his year-long commitment to a psychiatric hospital and involvement in another murder-for-hire trial in Tennessee in 1993. Myers was the alleged target of that murder plot, but ended up testifying for the Morristown city councilman who was accused of plotting to kill him.

Hayes direct testimony continues when the trial reconvenes on Monday. The Court schedule will also include a competency hearing for Lawrence Myers, the man who wrote a pro-Hayes profile for Media Bypass magazine, then launched a murder conspiracy case against Hayes by informing the FBI that Hayes was trying to hire a contract killer to murder his own son.

Hayes, jailed without bail since his arrest on October 22, 1996, steadfastly maintains that he has done nothing wrong and that the charges against him were "trumped-up" by federal officials who want to stop his revelations of high-level government corruption, as reported in the Media Bypass article by Lawrence Myers.