Defense motion to continue stops clock in Carter case

The clock is no longer ticking.

New Kent commonwealth’s attorney Linwood Gregory is out from under a time constraint for bringing John Steven Carter, the accused drug dealer involved in a fatal 2008 shooting in Lanexa, to trial on a list of felony charges.

By filing for a continuance in the matter of a preliminary hearing on four of the felony counts, Carter’s new attorney has effectively stopped the clock — permanently. Gregory, meanwhile, can be declared the winner in a legal maneuvering contest with the defendant.

That preliminary hearing, originally scheduled for Sept. 8, is now set for Sept. 22 at 1 p.m. in New Kent General District Court before Judge Jeffrey Shaw. Those four charges against Carter, 58, are illegal disposal of a dead body, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and two counts of forgery of a public document.

Tim Clancy, Carter’s lawyer from Hampton, requested a continuance shortly after being hired by the defendant. Clancy replaces Carter’s court-appointed attorney, Martin Mooradian.

Provided Shaw certifies the four charges following the Sept. 22 hearing, Gregory plans to seek indictments before a circuit court grand jury in November. If the grand jury hands up indictments, trial will be set for a later date.

Already, an Oct. 29 trial before a jury has been scheduled on the two remaining charges — manufacturing marijuana and possession of marijuana with intent to distribute.

“It’s possible Carter could waive a grand jury and we do all of the charges on Oct. 29,” Gregory said on Monday. It’s also possible, he added, that Clancy could further postpone proceedings by requesting a change of venue due to the case’s extensive press coverage.

Gregory said he has subpoenaed all but one witness he plans to call for the hearing and trial. All that remains is to find a judge to preside over matters in circuit court. Judge Thomas B. Hoover has disqualified himself since he prosecuted Carter on felony charges back in 1982 while serving as county commonwealth’s attorney. As of press time, a substitute judge had not been named.

And it was from the 1982 case in New Kent that Gregory theorizes Carter got his cue to start the legal maneuvering on the latest charges. Last April, Gregory filed documents seeking to have Carter returned to New Kent to stand trial after the defendant finishes serving a 10-year sentence in federal prison at Fort Dix, N.J. on drug and weapons convictions from Florida.

Carter reacted by filing paperwork that requires trial on the New Kent charges to take place within 180 days or the charges must be dropped. The law allows a prisoner held in one state to make such a request pertaining only to charges filed in another state.

Circuit court records from 1982 reveal the ploy worked for a codefendant of Carter’s in a plot to steal a M-16 rifle from Fort Eustis and use the weapon to kill a state ABC agent. The agent was the key witness in a New Kent drug case involving Carter’s wife. The codefendant, housed out of state in a military prison, used the 180-day tactic to have charges in New Kent dropped.

Carter, however, did not use the tactic in 1982 and could not since he was never behind bars out of state. Gregory said he misspoke when he told another reporter in July that Carter used the ploy back then. Carter was convicted in New Kent for possessing a machine gun and conspiring to murder a police officer. He served four years of a combined seven-year sentence.

The current dead body disposal and firearm possession charges faced by Carter stem from an Oct. 14, 2008 incident in which four Williamsburg-area teens traveled to Carter’s rental house on Route 60 in Lanexa intent on robbing the reputed drug dealer of marijuana and cash. One teen, 18-year-old Christopher Greene, wielded a shotgun.

Greene died when struck by two bullets fired from a handgun as he tried to kick open the house’s back door. The other three teens fled. Carter also took off, but not before investigators allege he hid Greene’s body under a pile of firewood and a tarp in the back yard. Carter eluded capture until March 18, 2009 when he was arrested in a small town in southern Alabama.

Soon after the shooting, investigators discovered a concealed “grow room” inside the Lanexa house containing 348 marijuana plants with a street value exceeding $1 million, hence the marijuana manufacturing and distribution charges.

The two forgery counts relate to Carter allegedly signing the name of the late William Benton Jr., another codefendant in the 1982 matter, on a pair of police summonses earlier in 2008.

If convicted, Carter faces from five to 30 years in prison on both the marijuana manufacturing and distribution counts, two to 10 years on each forgery charge, a mandatory two years and up to five on the firearm charge, and one to five years on the body disposal count. The manufacturing count also carries up to a $10,000 fine.

The defendant is not being charged with killing Greene since investigators say he acted in self-defense. Carter is being held in Henrico Jail East after being transferred from federal prison on July 20.