By Brandon Ortiz
bortiz@herald-leader.com
A defense attorney made an impassioned plea Monday morning on behalf of a Lexington man on trial in the 2003 slaying of a truck driver, accusing a cohort of violent felons of conspiring to pin the blame on his client.
Defense attorney Scott Drabenstadt noted the inconsistencies of prosecution witnesses who accused Marc Buchanan of robbing and killing Carl Gene McClung, a West Virginian, at the Scrub-a-Truck wash on Nandino Boulevard in August 2003. Each witness had pending charges and prior records.
And the details of the witnesses’ stories varied, from minor details like the car driven to the crime scene to glaring inconsistencies like the race of the victim and one of the perpetrators, Drabenstadt said.
“Every one of them is a violent felon. They came in here and they lied,” Drabenstadt told jurors in his closing argument in Fayette Circuit Court. “And they have stolen, temporarily, his freedom. Temporarily — because this jury is not going to let it happen. This jury is not going to stand for this.”
Court recessed shortly before noon for a lunch break. Prosecutors will present their closing argument in the afternoon.
I hope the jury is not swayed by the words of a lawyer and see the true villian who stands before them. A gentle man whose family suffered the loss of a beloved son, husband, father, brother, uncle and friend did not deserve to suffer their loss. This criminal deserves to loose his freedom. He had a hand in the violent, undeserved death of a man who had a life that can’t be returned. So he’s lost his freedom? What about his victim?