Man acquitted in killing says truth was on his side
BY JOE DUGGAN/Lincoln Journal Star
Tuesday, Apr 24, 2007 - 12:45:41 am CDT
OMAHA – Dennis Lockard felt his heart pounding Saturday as he waited for the jury to declare a verdict in his murder trial.
The 39-year-old Stella man felt something else in the moments before he heard their decision.
“There’s only one time I’ve been more scared in my life,” he said, “and that was the night Jimmy Nutile died.” When he heard and fully understood that he had been acquitted of second-degree murder, his fear drowned in a flood of relief and thankfulness.
“It was overwhelmingly awesome.”
On Monday, sitting in the office of the Omaha lawyer who defended him, Lockard talked for the first time since the jury found him not guilty. He said the past eight months have taught him to believe in the legal system, brought him closer to God and shown him the difference between old friends and true friends.
The true friends, along with his wife, two sons and other close relatives, helped him survive the possibility he might spend the rest of his life in prison. For eight months, he was a murder defendant, charged with the Aug. 18 shooting of James Nutile, 32, of Humboldt.
Lockard knows not everyone believes jurors made right decision – that’s clear from the death threat against him made in a phone call last week to the Richardson County Sheriff’s Office. He said Monday he was made aware of no developments in the investigation of the threat.
But the anger some feel about the verdict illustrated another lesson Lockard learned in the past eight months – don’t judge until you have all the facts.
“People, I guess, they’re going to believe what they want,” he said. “But the people who weren’t there in court, they didn’t see all the evidence that the jury saw. If they had, they would know it was indisputable facts.”
On the night of Aug. 17, Lockard was visiting his parents at their home on Main Street in Stella when a group of friends who had spent the night drinking at area bars came to the house next door. Later, Nutile got angry with one of his friends and started punching him in the face and head out on the sidewalk in front of the houses.
Lockard, who carried a handgun because of his work foreclosing houses for mortgage companies, fired a warning shot, thinking it would stop Nutile’s attack. Instead, Nutile rushed Lockard and knocked him to the ground.
With Nutile on top of him, Lockard told jurors he thought he was being stabbed. He also feared Nutile might get the gun from him, so he shot the man twice in the chest.
Ballistic evidence played a crucial role in the trial because it showed one of the shots was fired at close range, which supported Lockard’s testimony.
Defense attorney James Martin Davis also emphasized throughout the trial that Nutile, a three-time prison inmate, had alcohol and methamphetamine in his bloodstream. In the end, Davis said, his client made a split-second decision that, “it’s better to be judged by 12 than carried by six.”
Looking back on that night, Lockard said he thinks he may have saved Nutile’s friend from serious injuries or death. When authorities interviewed the man the next day, they urged him to seek medical treatment for what appeared to be a concussion.
Lockard also said he knows he saved himself. While he wished it would have turned out differently, he couldn’t say he would have done things differently.
“It’s a tragedy that it happened, but I had no choice,” he said. “Still I know the Nutile family is going through the loss of their son’s life.”
Defending himself from a murder charge cost Lockard more than stress. After his arrest, he spent about three weeks in jail until his family could come up with the $40,000 in cash and $360,000 in collateral to bond him out. He said the court will keep $4,000 of the bond money.
But that pales in comparison to the roughly $50,000 in attorneys fees, private investigators fees, lab tests and personal counseling sessions he and his family will have to pay. He said he still attends counseling to help cope with the shooting.
He believes he should have never been charged.
To prove it, two days before the trial, when prosecutors offered him manslaughter as a plea bargain, he turned them down.
He believed the jury would acquit.
He had the evidence in his favor.
And he had the truth, he said.
“It’s awfully hard to find holes in the truth.”
