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The Right To Kill?

This story originally aired Nov. 6, 2004. It was updated on March 20, 2008.

Cherry Hammock says she had no choice but to shoot her husband, Jay.

"The reason I pulled the trigger is because he was coming after me," says Hammock, who believes she would have been killed the night her husband died.

But Jay's parents, Pete and Wyolene Hammock, bristle at the notion that their son had a violent and dangerous past. They insist that Jay, a skilled mechanic with a fondness for racing high-performance, high-priced motorcycles, didn't deserve to die.

"I think she planned the whole thing. I really do," says Wyolene Hammock.

Cherry says her husband's death was a tragic ending to what she hoped would be a lifelong relationship. They had shared a spacious home nestled in the woods of southern Georgia.

Cherry, a professional contractor, says it was their retirement home. "I just wanted someone to spend the rest of my life with," she told Correspondent Maureen Maher last November. "Someone to grow old with."


Cherry was the oldest of six siblings in a close-knit brood. Eager to start a family of her own, she married her high school sweetheart and had three children. After her marriage fell apart, Cherry remained close to her now-grown children and seven grandchildren.

She had a new boyfriend, Roger Bloodworth, but they broke up after an eight-year relationship. After that, she got a call from Roger's best friend, Jay Hammock.

"I never thought of him as someone to date," recalls Cherry. "But when he called me and asked me to go to the race with him, I went and we had a lotta fun."

Although Jay was nine years younger than Cherry, they soon married, and began building their beloved house. But shortly after they moved in, Cherry says Jay began to show a dark side: "When he would get angry, he would just get very angry."

Some behavior was deeply disturbing, like Jay's reaction when Cherry's dog, Rebel, was slow to get out of their car. "Jay was angry to the point that when Rebel got out of the car, he just shot him," recalls Cherry. "He shot my dog and killed him. I'd just never seen that much anger come out of him before. And, of course, then, he was sorry. He was so sorry afterwards."

Then, Jay's first wife, Tracie, told Cherry about how Jay had severely beaten her years ago: "It was like he snapped. He threw me down and my head busted. He roughed me up pretty bad."

Cherry says Jay never hit her, but he was becoming verbally abusive. "He would just go into such a rage and belittle me," she says. "I just didn't want to give up on him."

After five years of marriage, she says Jay moved into a guest room and demanded a divorce. "I guess I was wanting more then he was wanting to give, but that was OK. I kept trying, anyways," says Cherry. "I just didn't want to have another failed marriage."

In September 2001, Cherry came home to find a pile of torn-up wedding photos and a nasty handwritten note ordering her to leave the house. Frightened, she filed a police report and spent the next two nights with her son.

Soon after, Cherry tried to get a restraining order against Jay. She was told she'd have to wait two weeks for a hearing, even though she stated that Jay "started carrying his pistol" and she was "afraid of her life."

Later that day, a divorce lawyer strongly advised Cherry to go home so she could lay claim to the house. She headed home after dropping by her neighbor's house and says she sensed danger at home. Jay wasn't home, and his gun was laying out on the nightstand, so Cherry locked the gun in her truck "because I just felt like he might use it."

It would be Cherry, however, who would fire a fatal shot that night. "All I said was, 'Jay, just please leave me alone,'" recalls Cherry, who spent four hours in her bedroom, listening to her husband hurl insults through the door.

When he crashed through that door, she says she feared for her very life: "He had never been that aggressive before."

Even after she fired her gun, she says she was still afraid. "I just saw him laying there," she says. "I was afraid he was going to grab me."

Police took note of the broken door, Cherry's gun, and the blood spattered on the bed. Cherry told them how Jay "kicked the door in" and how he'd "beaten his first wife."

"The statements initially seemed credible. They seemed believable," says Sheriff Kerry Dunaway, who saw no reason that night to make an arrest. "The possibility certainly existed that her story in its entirety was complete and accurate."

But Jay's parents struggled to understand why Cherry was so quick to shoot their son, and why her weapon was loaded with hollow-point bullets. They also say their son was just a hard-working husband seeking a divorce and his fair share of the property.

"I just could never have accepted that woman living out there, with his blood on her hands," says Jay's father, Pete.

Cherry was still living at home, but she didn't know that Dunaway was conducting an investigation. "There was someone else in the room that night the homicide took place, and his story needed to be heard. And that was Jay Hammock," says Dunaway.

If Jay had been so menacing, Dunaway wondered, why had Cherry felt safe in that room. "Miss Hammock is in the construction business, and I think she realized that the door was not sufficient to keep Mr. Hammock or anyone else from coming in on her," says Dunaway. "With him on one side of the bedroom door and her on another, exchanging argumentative words for four hours, she never called the sheriff's office."

And Cherry admitted she hid Jay's gun, but kept hers within easy reach.

Assistant District Attorney Biff Tillis also had doubts about Cherry's story. "The physical evidence put the two farther apart, so that would certainly lessen the threat, if there were a threat," says Tillis. "To me, it looked like she was laying a trap."

Five months after she shot her husband, Cherry Hammock was charged with murder. She never denied pulling the trigger, but the law says she had every right to use deadly force if she reasonably felt her own life was being threatened. But if there was no reason to fear for her life, she had no right to kill her husband.

Did she plan to kill Jay? "No, I did not want him dead," says Cherry.

One year after Jay was killed, Cherry would stand trial in Crawford County. There were only four homicides there in the last four years. A jury would decide if Cherry was justified in taking her husband's life.

Laura and Frank Hogue, the husband/wife lawyer team defending Cherry, were confident. "There was no question in Cherry Hammock's mind that it was going to be 'him or me,'" says Laura Hogue.

"Would he have punched her once and stopped? One black eye, a couple teeth? Who knows?" adds Frank Hogue. "But he had the capacity to pummel her to death, if he wanted to."

Tillis, however, says there was no "history of physical violence between the couple." At trial, Jay's friend, Roger Bloodworth, spoke out against his former girlfriend: "The woman never feared for her life, ever. She wasn't scared of anybody."

The defense also called Jay's first wife, Tracie Archer, whom Jay had so severely beaten. But Archer had little sympathy for Cherry. "Something that happened between Jay and I 15 years ago was one of the first things out of her mouth, like she had already planned her defense," says Archer. "He made huge mistakes and he learned from that. And it never happened again."

Still, Cherry and her attorneys were so confident of an acquittal, they chose not to take the stand. "I know the truth," says Cherry. "I just felt like justice would be done."

The jury deliberated about four hours before delivering its verdict: guilty. "I couldn't believe that he said guilty," says Cherry.

Some jurors, however, have no regrets. "She had the telephone with her," says Paige, a juror. "She could have gone out a window."

"She could have shot him somewhere else," adds another juror, Dwight. "Why not just hit him in the leg?"

Cherry was sentenced to life in prison. But after two years behind bars, everything changed; her conviction for murdering her husband, Jay, was overturned. A high court ruled that her trial was unfair, because during deliberation, a juror did something she should not have done.

Cherry claimed that Jay was nearly on top of her when she shot him. But the state argues that he was farther away, on the other side of the bed. To help sort things out, a juror measured her own bed, and shared that measurement with others. Because of that, Cherry will get a new trial.

Cherry's attorneys, however, believe that the judges were troubled by more than just jury misconduct.

"My sense is they thought the verdict was wrong," says Frank Hogue, who is hoping to move Cherry out of jail, and the case out of Crawford.

Cherry's bond hearing marks the beginning of her new fight for her life. "I want to prove it was self-defense," she says. "I want to prove that I would never have hurt him."

The judge grants her bond, and within hours, a friend posts the $50,000 bond. After almost two years in prison, Cherry is free. Everyone is eager to celebrate her newfound freedom, but her victory feels bittersweet when she realizes the time she has lost. She had to sell all her belongings to pay for her defense, and lost her beloved house to foreclosure.

But for Jay's parents, Pete and Wyolene Hammock, nothing will ever make up for the loss of their son. They are outraged that Cherry's conviction has been overturned.

Three weeks from Cherry's new trial, she says she is confident that she'll convince the jury that she had to use deadly force: "I loved Jay, but I don't feel guilty for defending my life."

Cherry saw her biggest challenge as "getting the jury to put themselves in my place." She was pinning her hopes for acquittal on a change in venue.

"She knows that I think that the case can go either way," says Frank Hogue, who planned to defend Cherry again.

The Hogues also know that they must do a better job of explaining why Cherry feared for her life that night. They'll use a forensic dummy to demonstrate how Jay was exactly where Cherry says he was, as proof that he was enraged when he crashed through the door.

"To break one that's closed and barricaded with a chair, it's gonna be violent," says Frank Hogue. "It's going to be loud. And it's going to tell you, especially when you have a history behind it, 'This person means violence.'"

A former racing buddy, W.L. Amerson, also testified again about a disturbing conversation he had with Jay at lunch shortly before the shooting: "He said that before he would let her take everything he had, that he would blow her ass away."

Cherry insists that she feared for her life, and this time, she plans to take the stand. But taking the stand will mean taking the heat from the prosecution, who said that she was prepared to attack, and not afraid for her life. "She knew where all the firepower in the house was and she controlled all of it," says Tillis.

Even Cherry admits that she never warned Jay that she had a loaded gun. But was it an accident? "I wouldn't have raised the gun if I wasn't gonna pull the trigger," she says. "But it did go off before I had a chance to think about pulling the trigger."
Why didn't she fire a warning shot? "He was coming around, reaching for me," says Cherry. "I just didn't have time to aim."

Did she believe that either she or Jay would die that night? "I did believe that. I was afraid," says Cherry. "Not everybody reacts to situations the same way. I was truly afraid for my life, and I took another life. And I was so sorry for that. I couldn't help it."

One week before trial, Cherry suffers a setback. She loses her bid for a change of venue, and she will be retried where she was convicted - in Crawford County.

But she will face another challenge at her new trial,one that could actually increase her chances of going back to prison. This time, the jurors will have a choice if they convict her. They could say it was murder, or they could say it was manslaughter, a less serious offense that could still carry up to 20 years.

The prosecution ratchets up the pressure by offering a plea to manslaughter. It's the decision of a lifetime for Cherry. She decides to risk it all and face trial. "I'm innocent, and winning this case will help change the way that the law looks at women who ask for help," she says.

Back at the courthouse, Cherry feels a familiar sense of dread. "I've got to prove my innocence," she says.

But as jury selection winds down, about an hour before opening statements are to begin, there's one last plea offer, involuntary manslaughter, with a maximum of six years. "I told her my opinion was this was a good deal, and it was too good to pass up," says Frank Hogue.

As Cherry walks into court, she feels she has no other choice but to plead guilty. She's unwilling to risk a trial that could end with life in prison. The judge grants her one last night of freedom before he'll decide her sentence.

Cherry knows she will probably have to serve more time, and she doesn't think it's fair.

"No woman should have to take a plea for defending her life. It's not fair," says Cherry. "I'm praying for probation or for him to say time served."

Cherry faces both friends and foes on her final day in court. The Hammocks ask the judge to give Cherry the maximum time. But Cherry's supporters beg for mercy.

Three years after she killed her husband, Cherry finally speaks in court. "I didn't want to hurt him. I loved him. And this has been a lot of hurt on both sides. And I don't want any more hurt," says Cherry.

The judge announces his decision, and sentences Cherry to five years in prison. With credit for time served, Cherry will serve another three years behind bars.

The Hammocks accept this sentence, but feel cheated out of justice. "They made it sound like life is real cheap," says Jay's mother, Wyolene. "Five years to kill, when you kill somebody - because she absolutely murdered him."

But that's an accusation Cherry says she will always deny, no matter how long she spends behind bars.

Cherry Hammock was released from prison in May 2006. She served three and a half years.

She's back working as a home contractor and volunteers with a charity for homeless and abused women.

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