ANDERSON — John Hunter Lambert IV sat quietly as a jury returned a verdict of guilty in the Dec. 21, 2008, strangulation death of his ex-wife, Amerise “B.J.” Barbre.
It took the jury 20 minutes to arrive at the verdict, which the foreman handed over to the judge Wednesday morning.
The trial hinged on whether Lambert intended to kill Barbre or did so with malice, not about whether he was the one who strangled her to death. Lambert's defense attorney, Robert Gamble, said that Lambert would have pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter if he had been allowed.
“I’m sorry for what I did,” Lambert said before he was sentenced. “I think about it every night when the lights go out. It’s not like I don’t have remorse, I’ve got lots of remorse … I think it will be like that for the rest of my life.”
Judge Alex Macaulay asked Lambert how old he was before delivering a sentence of 36 years, with credit for time served.
Lambert is 36. Barbre was 31 when she died.
When the verdict was read, a small sigh came from the section of the court where family members sat.
Barbre and Lambert had a volatile relationship that lasted, on and off, for about 14 years. There was plenty of drinking and drug use, Gamble said.
A statement to investigators from Lambert was read Wednesday in court that described the events leading up to the strangling death of Barbre.
After an evening of drinking, dancing to Christmas music and taking drugs, Barbre and Lambert got into an argument on the night of Dec. 21, 2008.
“The next thing I remember I was on top of her on the bed. I looked down and her mouth was moving,” Lambert said in the statement. “My hands were still around her neck and I started squeezing again.”
Assistant Solicitor Rame Campbell said the word “and” in Lambert’s statement was critical because it showed that he knew what he was doing and was not in a blacked-out state for the entire strangulation, as Gamble argued.
Campbell and Gamble agreed that if the strangulation had been an act of passion, it would be manslaughter.
Gamble said that Barbre told Lambert that she would be sleeping around with other men and those words drove Lambert into a state where he did not know what he was doing. Campbell said that the acts of Lambert, including keeping her body in a shallow grave until showing the site to police 47 days later and attempting to hide evidence, showed that Lambert knew what he was doing was wrong.
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