The Nichols Law Firm filed pleadings on August 4th based on testimony and evidence that shows a client was misinformed by his former attorney. The attorney admitted on the witness stand last June that he told the client that he would have a specific plea agreement but never put the plea agreement on the record during the client's plea hearing in front of an Ingham County Judge. Mike Nichols has been fighting for this client's right to have his plea re-visited and said "this has been an extremely hard fight. I am disappointed that the client was also subjected to accusations by his former lawyer in the newspaper."
Judge will rule on status of guilty plea
Kevin Grasha
Staff
Lansing State Journal
A judge will decide whether to allow a 21-year-old Lansing man to withdraw his guilty plea in the shooting death of his girlfriend.
Jeffrey Scott Husband pleaded guilty in March to second-degree murder in the December 2006 death of 18-year-old Vanessa Kay Pruitt.
At a hearing Monday in Ingham County Circuit Court that began in the afternoon and went until nearly 9 p.m., Husband said that a previous attorney misled him into pleading guilty and guaranteed his sentence would be 22 years in prison.
Under state law, a second-degree murder conviction is punishable by up to life in prison.
Husband also said his former attorney, William Hankins Jr., made it clear the day before the March 13 plea hearing that he would not take the case to trial.
In an interview Tuesday, Hankins said Husband's story was a "complete and total fabrication."
"We were preparing for trial since December (before the plea hearing)," Hankins said. "The guy is playing the system, that's all he's doing."
It is not known when Judge James Giddings will make a decision.
"It is unfortunate that Mr. Husband's former lawyer has turned this into a competition over who can dump on whom, and it's made a difficult situation between the attorney and his former client and the circumstances surrounding this plea even worse," said Husband's new attorney, Mike Nichols.
He added: "It's pretty clear based on (Husband's) testimony what he believed when he entered into the plea agreement and fairly clear what his former lawyer believed was the law."
Pruitt was nine to 12 weeks pregnant when Husband shot her four times as her sister lay on top of her, trying to shield her, according to testimony at a preliminary hearing last year.
Her sister was not seriously injured.
The shooting happened at Pruitt's Delhi Township apartment.
Contact Kevin Grasha at 267-1347 or kgrasha@lsj.com.
The judge is expected to rule on the motion on August 11th.