Last week the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals once again heard a case related to a man currently serving a life sentence after he admitted to killing his former girlfriend and wounding two men in 1988.
The case ultimately comes down to whether the Supreme Court upholds a 2014 decision by Special Judge James O. Holliday, who dismissed an indictment of Stephen Wayne Hatfield, now 65.
On Mother's Day, 1988, Hatfield murdered his ex-girlfriend, Tracey Andrews, and wounded her then-boyfriend, Dewey Meyers, and a bystander in a shooting rampage that traveled through Huntington and on to Chesapeake and Proctorville, Ohio.
The rampage ended when Hatfield was shot in the abdomen and leg in a shootout with police. While in the hospital, he unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide. Hatfield once again attempted suicide when he was transferred to jail to await trial.
The following year, Hatfield pleaded guilty to murder and two counts of attempted murder.
Two doctors, Herbert Haynes and Earnest Watkins, evaluated Hatfield's mental state after the suicide attempts, determining the man had suffered from major depression.
Hatfield described the month before the 1988 shooting as "a daze."
During his initial legal proceedings, the Court sought to determine whether Hatfield was competent to stand trial.
Hatfield, who entered a guilty plea, said he was competent, but ultimately changed his mind and appealed to the Supreme Court. His goal was to overturn his conviction based on his competency.
The high court sided with Hatfield, saying questions asked by then-Wayne County Circuit Judge Elliott "Spike" Maynard were inappropriate after the man's suicide attempts.
Since then the case has gone back and forth in the legal system, with the case being remanded and subsequently being appealed to higher courts.
In his 2014 decision, Holliday determined Hatfield's right to due process had been infringed in several ways.
"First by virtue of his constitutionally inadequate competency hearing, and second, by the Circuit Court's acceptance of (Hatfield's) guilty pleas and impositions of a life sentence in the face of uncontroverted evidence that (he) was not criminally responsible for his crimes," Holliday wrote.
Hatfield's attorney, Lonnie Simmons, noted on Wednesday that in the 27 years his client has been imprisoned several witnesses, including the initial doctors who examined him, had died and evidence had been destroyed.
"The issue here is not whether we could scrape together what evidence that the state hadn't destroyed intentionally, without notice to our client. All the physical evidence was destroyed except for the gun," Simmons said.
He said the initial notes written by two doctors who interviewed Hatfield after he murdered Andrews also were missing.
"We don't have their notes," Simmons said. "We don't have the basis."
Hatfield's defense is centered on whether he was mentally stable when he murdered Andrews.
But Wayne County Prosecuting Attorney Thomas Plymale, who has appealed Holliday's order, told the justices that enough evidence still exists for new experts to use the notes written by Haynes and Watkins to determine his mental state.
"The idea that it's impossible to do that at this point is just simply not so," he said.
The Supreme Court did not rule on the case on Wednesday.
Reach Joel Ebert at 304-348-4843, joel.ebert@dailymailwv.com, or follow @joelebert29 on Twitter.