By Jean Cole
James Gardner’s eyes filled with tears and his thin hands gripped the arms of his wheelchair, as he spoke of the neighbor who pleaded guilty Tuesday to shooting him following a fight over a bull in March.
“I wish he would have gotten 20 years,” Gardner said in the lobby of the Limestone County Courthouse, where Jerry Odum Pope, 58, of 19848 East Limestone Road had entered a last-minute plea as his trial was about to begin. “He took everything from me with one single shot. I built houses for 20 years and I taught my kids to build houses. Now I just take it one day at a time.”
Earlier in the morning, a beleaguered Pope hugged family members after entering a blind plea to first-degree assault, which Limestone Circuit Judge Bob Baker accepted. The blind plea means Pope admitted guilt without guarantee of a particular sentence. First-degree assault in connection with a firearm carries a mandatory minimum prison sentence of 10 years and a maximum of 20 years.
Baker said he would sentence Pope after the holidays and following a pre-sentencing investigation. No date is set.
The last-minute plea took Pope’s fate out of the hands of a jury and placed it in the hands of a judge. Pope’s attorney, John Butler of Huntsville, hopes that will result in a combination of prison time and probation for his client.
As the jury pool filed out of the courtroom Tuesday morning — their services never needed — Assistant District Attorney Becky Grimes and Limestone County Sheriff’s Chief Investigator Stanley McNatt gathered up boxes of evidence, including documents, photographs and a branch about 1 1/2 inches in diameter and more than 6 feet long, which Gardner had used on the day of the shooting.
The two men had argued that Sunday afternoon of March 29 about Gardner’s bull escaping and mingling with Pope’s cattle, Limestone County Sheriff Mike Blakely said at the time. Gardner struck Pope with the branch, and Pope fired a single shot to Gardner’s chest, which traveled down ward and lodged in his spine, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down, officials said.
Gardner said Tuesday he sustained pressure wounds, or bedsores, during initial treatment after the shooting. That led to a systemic infection called sepsis, which he said will eventually kill him.
“I don’t have long to live,” Gardner said.
Pope also is not in good health, according to his sister, June Pope. She said she was satisfied with her brother pleading guilty to assault and with Baker sentencing him.
On the way out of the courthouse, Gardner’s wife, Patricia, handed her husband a frame containing three photographs of better times —when Gardner was able to hunt — so she could push him in his wheelchair to the car. They were about to head back home to Toney, where they moved after the shooting.
But even in the new place, Gardner struggles to find purpose in life aside from his grandchildren.
“What ya had planned — it don’t work out,” he said.
Meanwhile, Pope, who will remain free on bond until sentencing, still lives in the same home on the same road where a dispute over a bull has changed two lives and the lives of their loved ones forever.
