Jury Finds Adams Guilty

Wearing an expression of incredulity, Charles W. Adams of Warsaw sat silently Tuesday afternoon as he listened to the judge read the jury's verdict in the case against him - guilty on all charges. He also was found to be a habitual offender, which will increase any prison term he is ordered to serve. He was taken into custody while awaiting sentencing.

The eight-man, four-woman jury deliberated on the charges of battery with a deadly weapon, a Class C felony; criminal deviant conduct, a Class B felony; and criminal confinement, a Class D felony, for about two hours before returning its verdicts of guilty. The second phase of deliberation, to determine whether the 32-year-old Adams was a habitual criminal, took just five minutes. Before the matter was placed into the hands of the jurors, they were able to review information on his previous convictions, including one in 1986 for rape in Kosciusko County, and 1989 and 1990 convictions for criminal confinement and attempted escape, respectively, in Madison County. A person can be adjudged a habitual offender if he has two or more unrelated felony convictions against him.

The victim of Adams' crimes - his wife - put her head in her hands and stifled a cry as the guilty verdicts were read, and softly spoke a victorious, "Yes!" as the habitual offender status was announced. She sobbed and hugged the investigator, Detective Sgt. Paul Schmitt of the Warsaw Police Department, afterward outside the courtroom.

During his closing statement Tuesday morning, Chief Deputy Prosecutor Byron Tinkey told jurors not to spend a lot of time on Adams' self-defense issue. Mrs. Adams suffered facial bruising and cuts, as well as multiple bruises to the rest of her body in the June 2 and 3, 1998, attack at the couple's home, during which she also was raped and sodomized.

"There were no marks, cuts or scrapes on the defendant, even though he was running from this room to that room in self-defense," Tinkey said. "He was committing a crime and trying to pander his story onto you that this was self-defense."

Adams claimed during his testimony in the two-day trial in Kosciusko Superior Court I that he struck his wife in an attempt to get her and her violent outburst away from him. Mrs. Adams told the court that she did not have a knife the night of the attack on her, but she did stab him during a previous domestic dispute Jan. 31, 1998. She will be sentenced for that crime today.

"She has taken responsibility for her actions. She has pleaded guilty," Tinkey said. "He is not taking responsibility."

Tinkey added that the fact that Adams' attack on his wife "was not a single blow" but "a repetitive, violent attack on her" was evidence that it was not done in self-defense.

Defense attorney Vern Landis said that for the jury to find Adams guilty, they would have to believe virtually everything from Mrs. Adams' testimony. "You've heard two very, very different versions of what happened that night in that house," Landis said.

Mrs. Adams told jurors that her husband beat her with his hands and with a whiskey bottle. She also was hog-tied, gagged, raped and sodomized during the four-hour ordeal. Police officers who came to the Adams residence after the fight ended were sent away by Mrs. Adams, who said she told them she was OK because she was in shock and didn't think they could get to her before her husband did. She went to the hospital for treatment of her injuries later in the morning on June 3, 1998.

Adams said he had consentual anal sex with his wife, as he has on prior occasions, and that he got physical with her only after she became violent and came after him swinging her fists and with a knife.

Both admitted to drinking, although Adams claims his wife drank much more than he did and both testified that calls were made to a telephone sex operator.

When police came to the Adams home on June 3, 1998, it was after that telephone operator call 911 after hearing Mrs. Adams' cries of distress.

Tinkey also refuted Landis' insinuation that Mrs. Adams' story to police about the attack was retaliation for the charges filed against her in connection with the January 1998 stabbing incident.

Judge Duane Huffer set Adams' sentencing in this case for 8:45 a.m. Oct. 20. The sentences for the offenses will be ordered served concurrently since they resulted from the same incident and the Class B felony carries the greatest punishment, with six to 20 years in prison possible. Also, the habitual offender term would add at least six years, the minimum from the Class B felony, to any sentence imposed by the judge.