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Prison talks may figure in Melendi murder trial
By DAVID SIMPSON
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 08/02/05
DeKalb County prosecutors hope to use Colvin "Butch" Hinton's prison conversations and the accounts of women who say he attacked them to help persuade a jury that Hinton killed Shannon Melendi, an Emory University student who vanished in 1994.
Melendi's body never was found, and the grand jury that indicted Hinton for murder last year said it was not known how she died. Prosecutors cannot say how they hope to overcome those obstacles, because they along with Hinton's lawyer and Melendi's family and friends are under a judge's gag order intended to limit publicity before jury selection begins Aug. 10. But recent court filings by the district attorney's office offer some information about prosecutors' plans.
The prosecution won permission from Superior Court Judge Anne Workman to bring five inmates of federal prisons to the DeKalb County Jail so they can testify. Lead prosecutor John Petrey said in court papers that Hinton, who served eight years in prison ending in 2004, made statements about the Melendi case to the inmates.
The court papers do not show what the inmates say they learned from Hinton. But a transcript of an earlier hearing before Workman shows that Petrey said the grand jury last year heard "evidence concerning Mr. Hinton's statements about that day [March 26, 1994, when Melendi disappeared]. There was evidence about disposal of the body concerning Ms. Melendi, but there was no evidence as to the cause of death."
Prosecutors also have sought Workman's permission to use testimony from five women who say Hinton, now 44, attacked them years before Melendi disappeared. Court papers listed those alleged incidents as an attempted rape in 1977, sexual battery in 1981 and three attacks in 1982: a rape, an attempted rape and an attempted murder.
In 1982, Hinton was imprisoned in Illinois for kidnapping and taking indecent liberties with a 14-year-old girl. About six years earlier, he underwent psychiatric counseling in connection with an attempted rape in Kentucky.
Court files do not indicate whether Workman has ruled on whether the alleged earlier attacks can be used at Hinton's trial.
Melendi, 19, vanished from her part-time job at a softball park near Memorial Drive and I-285. Police said that Hinton, a Clayton County resident, was working as an umpire at the park, and he was a longtime focus of their investigation.
He was indicted last year after the DeKalb district attorney's office said that new, undisclosed information had been uncovered.
Hinton is being held without bond. He was released from federal prison last year on a 1996 conviction for trying to burn down his house to commit insurance fraud.