An Atlanta man who had to be tried for murder a second time after the transcript from his first trial was lost, was convicted Wednesday in the killing of his wife, Fulton County authorities said.
Roy Lewis McKinney was sentenced to life plus one year in prison by Superior Court Judge Todd Markle after a jury returned guilty verdicts on charges of murder and cruelty to children in the third degree in the 2002 slaying of Shaquilla Weatherspoon.
McKinney had been found guilty in 2005, but the transcript from that trial subsequently was lost. Since he needed the record to challenge his conviction, an appellate court ordered a new trial.
During his re-trial, McKinney’s teenage daughter, 6 at the time of her mother’s murder, testified that she witnessed her father physically abuse her mother by punching her in the face. This prompted the child cruelty charges, according to a news release from the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office.
There was little evidence that tied McKinney to the crime, and some of it disappeared with the transcript – casting doubt on the prosecution’s ability to convict him again.
In 2005, the prosecution contended that McKinney murdered Weatherspoon, 29, a guard with the Fulton County Sheriff's Office, because she was unfaithful.
The woman’s body was found by land surveyors in June 2002 a wooded area near Greenbriar Parkway in Atlanta. The victim had left home four days earlier to attend a party and never returned.
The most damning evidence against McKinney in the first trial were cell phone records that showed he stopped calling her incessantly after reporting her missing on June 2, which prosecutors said indicated he knew she was dead. The phone records and a video of McKinney's police interview were lost.
The Fulton County Public Defender's office, which now represents McKinney, discovered the transcript was missing.
Court reporter Peggy Malcolm had been required by law to file a copy with the Superior Court Clerk and the state Attorney General, but neither office could produce a copy. Malcolm retired a month after the trial.
In court documents, Malcolm said she left the transcript and evidence in her Superior Court evidence locker. Her lawyer said co-workers later moved the locker contents to new storage. Fulton District Attorney Paul Howard contended she kept the transcript and lost it during the delay in appeal.
Howard tried to have Malcolm jailed for contempt of court, but a judge ruled in her favor in 2009.
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