Pinkston jury to decide: murder or self-defense

Mark Miller

Friday, Sept. 19, 1997 | 11:04 a.m.

Powerful closing arguments in the murder trial of Barbara Pinkston left the jury with the difficult decision of whether Pinkston's Father's Day 1995 slaying of Greg Payne was premeditated murder or self-defense.

Pinkston's attorney, Patricia Erickson, conceded that her client had fatally shot Payne, Pinkston's live-in boyfriend and father of her daughter, but that the shooting was justified as Pinkston felt reasonable fear for her life. That fear, Pinkston's other defense attorney, Laura Melia, argued, was based on Payne's past abuse, his repeated threats to Pinkston's life, a video-taped hand gesture that he was about to kill her, and Payne's attempt to retrieve a gun from his truck.

Deputy District Attorney Peggy Leen countered that Pinkston was the abusive one in their relationship, that Pinkston's claims that Payne threatened her were fabricated, that the hand gesture indicated a wave goodbye, that the truck contained no gun, and that Payne never owned a gun.

Because Payne had no gun, and a witness testified that Payne's last words were, "I'm leaving," and not, "I'm going to blow your (expletive) head off," as Pinkston testified, the killing was not self-defense, Deputy District Attorney Christopher Lalli said.

It was also not merely voluntary manslaughter, he said, because it was done with malice as evidenced by Pinkston waiting 10 seconds to shoot Payne a second time, as another witness testified.

Lalli argued the verdict can only be first-degree murder because the killing fit the legal criterium of having been done with premeditation, as documented by Pinkston in her journal.

The journal was not a list of options but mere therapy for Pinkston to sort her feelings, countered Erickson. Pinkston had discarded the journal's options and instead tried to speak with Payne while he visited their daughter at the Discovery Zone in Henderson, she said.

"Evil is easy and has infinite forms," Lalli said, quoting 17th century French philosopher Blaise Pascal. "How easy it was for Barbara Pinkston to shoot Greg Payne in the back, piercing his heart and dropping him like a rock. How easy it was to fire that shot into his face while he was lying on the ground dying."

The state had made an easy case of self-defense complicated, Melia said, by including a bewildering amount of evidence unrelated to the trial. She asked the jury to read evidence documents in their entirety and not take statements out of context as the prosecutors had done. She was "damned if she did (report the abuse), and damned if she didn't," Melia said, referring to arguments that when Pinkston reported abuse she was lying and if she omitted reports she was lying.

"Barbara Pinkston is a desperate woman with a desperate defense," Leen said. "What she's done is what's been going on around the country. The defendant claims the victim is the bad guy and the defendant is the victim. The victim is the one on trial."