Henrico, VA: Retrial for 2007 shooting in Richmond will use forensics experts

By BILL MCKELWAY | TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Published: August 17, 2010

Henrico, Va. --
A Richmond man facing a retrial in the shooting death of a girlfriend more than three years ago apparently will use state forensics experts to support his defense that the victim may have accidentally ended her own life.

Lawyers for Wyatt Ward Hollar, now 30, told a Henrico County Circuit Court jury yesterday that supervisors in the state Department of Forensic Science will testify this week that the muzzle of a .45-caliber, semi-automatic pistol was as close as 3 inches from Danielle Wilson in February 2007 when a single bullet ended her life.

But Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney David R. Giroux told jurors that a New York State forensics expert will say that the weapon was as much as 24 inches away, all but excluding the theory that Wilson held the gun backwards in her hand and shot herself in the chest.

The evidentiary flip-flop reverses the sources of testimony from Hollar's trial in October 2008, when prosecutors used Virginia forensics experts to disprove the self-inflicted gunshot argument and defense lawyers Cary Bowen and Susan Parrish relied on an outside expert to say otherwise.

Hollar, a 2002 Virginia Military Institute graduate and veteran of military duty in the Middle East, is on trial on a charge of second-degree murder, despite a conviction on that charge in a previous trial.

Originally sentenced to 15 years in prison, Hollar won a mistrial when Bowen and Parrish showed that jurors had listened during deliberations to more portions of a police interrogation than had been presented in court.

Jurors in the current trial have not been told of the prior conviction.

Wilson, 25, who was from Fredericksburg, was headed soon to graduate school after finishing James Madison University when she and Hollar ended up in a loud, alcohol-fueled argument at his apartment in the 5300 block of Glenside Drive in February 2007.

Hollar told police that Wilson grabbed a .45-caliber handgun from beneath a seat cushion where he was sitting and shot herself.

Wilson's body was exhumed on December 2007 as part of a prosecution effort to show that, based on her precise arm length and the lack of gunshot residue and other substances on her clothing and body, Wilson could not have fired the fatal shot.