<p>The threat of the death penalty is behind Kirk Billie. But he still could face a life sentence in his retrial on second-degree murder charges for drowning his two sons by rolling their mother's sport-utility vehicle into a canal at the end of a night of heavy drinking.</p><p>His original conviction followed years of legal wrangling between prosecutors and Miccosukee Indians about who had jurisdiction over Billie, who is a tribal member, and tribal witnesses. Tribal leaders forgave Billie and denounced his prosecution as "white man's justice."</p><p>Billie has remained behind bars for seven years, ever since a few hours before the boys' bodies were found in a mangled Chevrolet Tahoe submerged in a 13-foot-deep Everglades canal.</p><p>He insists he didn't know the boys were sleeping head to head on the back seat. Prosecutors claim he knew they were there. Both sides agree he was trying to punish the young boys' mother for cruising their Indian reservation at all hours instead of staying home and taking care of their three sons.</p><p>An appeals court threw out his conviction and two life sentences because prosecutors loaded the first trial with evidence of Billie's violence toward women, including a broomstick attack on the boys' pregnant mother Sheila Tiger and the baseball-bat beating of another girlfriend.</p><p>The new jury is allowed to hear about Billie holding a hammer to one son's head as a show of his frustration with Tiger, but otherwise his violent past will not be part of the second trial, which is set to start Tuesday in Miami.</p><p>"It was really one of the worst bad-act trials that I've seen. This was really way out of line," said Bruce Rogow, a Nova Southeastern University law professor who won Billie's appeal. "The state reached way back to facts that had nothing to do with the issue in this case: Did he know the children were in the truck?"</p><p>On the stand during his first trial, Billie was at times wary, combative and stubborn in testifying about his violent past and choked by emotion while talking about his sons, 3-year-old Keith and 5-year-old Kurt. To a juror, he came off pompous and arrogant.</p><p>Without so much of his past to confront, Billie may stay off the stand the second time around.</p><p>His case is one of several that have grabbed national attention where parents have been accused of intentionally drowning their children in a vehicle. In perhaps the notorious case, Susan Smith admitted strapping her 14-month-old and 3-year-old sons into their car seats and rolling the family car into a South Carolina lake in 1994. In Illinois, Amanda Hamm and ex-boyfriend Maurice LaGrone Jr. face separate murder trials in the deaths of her three children ranging in age from 23 months to 6 years. They drowned a year ago when a car slid down a boat ramp.</p><p>Rogow believes the state's aggressive posture against Billie was influenced in part by muscle-flexing by the 500-member Miccosukee tribe, which was best known for alligator wrestling at an Everglades pit stop before opening a cash-cow casino on the western edge of Miami.</p><p>Tribal and federal courts agreed state subpoenas held no power over witnesses on the reservation, which legally stands as a sovereign nation. The state responded by arresting Tiger and holding her at a hotel for three days for videotaped questioning when she drove off the reservation before the first trial.</p><p>The tribe backed Billie's request to go free on bail in August and pledged tribal police would turn him over if he failed to show up in court. But the tribe's attorney said the offer didn't extend to other members of the tribe.</p><p>Tiger and Billie's parents testified as prosecution witnesses in the 2001 trial. All three were convinced Billie didn't know his sons were in the car. It was nighttime, the rear windows were tinted, and there was a dispute over whether the dome light was working.</p><p>In the hours leading up to the drownings on June 27, 1997, Billie drank at least a six pack of beer and split at least four pitchers with his uncle at a bowling alley and pool hall in Miami. He called Tiger to say he wanted to see his sons, three of his nine children with several girlfriends.</p><p>She lied and said the boys were sleeping at her mother's house. He spotted the Tahoe on the reservation with Tiger's cousin at the wheel. The cousin stopped at her father's house and carried Billie's youngest out of the SUV. Billie hopped in, drove off and stewed over his repeated threats to Tiger to dump the SUV "to slow her down."</p><p>He drove a few miles to the canal just off the reservation. He said he put the Tahoe in gear at the water's edge and got out. In the words of prosecutor Reid Rubin in the first trial, Billie "stood there and watched them dying a horrible death out of spite."</p><p>Jurors were shown a videotaped re-enactment that showed a different Tahoe taking 96 seconds to sink. The defense made its own tape for the retrial. Billie could face a life sentence again if a jury finds premeditation, but the maximum sentence for two counts of felony murder would be 30 years.</p><p>A medical examiner hypothesized that the boys woke up and cried out, testimony that Rogow said she lacked the expertise to offer. The defense has hired a forensic expert and a psychologist for the retrial.</p><p>Billie walked away from the canal and by chance was arrested by a tribal police officer on a loitering charge. Tiger, then his mother and finally his father told Billie in a holding cell that the boys were inside.</p><p>In the first of several statements to police, Tiger said Billie answered, "Yeah," when she asked him if he knew the boys were in back and whether they were OK.</p><p>But Billie testified that he thought Tiger was lying because she cared so much about the Tahoe.</p><p>Taken in handcuffs to the canal, Billie nodded with his head to show where the SUV sank. Miami-Dade fire-rescue Capt. P.J. Parker thought Billie was "sarcastic and cold" at the canal. Parker testified that Billie said, "I had a fight with my wife, I made a threat, and I carried it out."</p><p>Reid cited a note that Billie left in Tiger's trailer saying, "Don't ever think the kids will stop me." Billie said he wrote it months earlier after threatening to report Tiger for neglecting their sons.</p>
http://accesswdun.com/article/2004/9/161528
© Copyright 2015 AccessNorthGa.com
All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission.
