| Circumstances of Offense:
Around noon on June 28, 1986, the son of Leonard Wayne and Esther Wayne arrived at his parents’ home in Deland for a visit. He noticed that the couple’s car was gone and the door to the house was ajar. Upon entering the bedroom he discovered his parents lying on the floor, dead. Autopsies revealed that Mrs. Wayne died of multiple blows to the head and that Mr. Wayne died of cardiac arrest.
At Cherry’s trial, state’s witness Lorraine Neloms testified that the defendant left the apartment they shared between 11 and 11:30 p.m. on June 27, saying that he needed some money. He returned about an hour later with two or three rifles and a wallet containing a bankcard and a license identifying a man named Wayne. She asked where he had been, and he responded that he went inside a home near the armory. She said Cherry told her that after entering the home Mrs. Wayne tried to fight him and that he pushed Mr. Cherry who then clutched his chest. Neloms also testified that Cherry bled from a wound on his right thumb, which he stated was the result of cutting a line.
Cherry left the apartment twice more that evening. The first time, he went to a bank and upon his return stated that a card was stuck in the automatic teller machine. The second time, he left “to ditch the car he stole.”
A Sunbank supervisor testified that the ATM three blocks from the Wayne home captured a Master Card and a Sun Bank Card belonging to the Waynes on June 28, 1986. An audit revealed that five or six transactions were unsuccessfully attempted between 1:55 and 2 a.m.
Police testimony indicated that the telephone wire outside the house has been cut and that blood had been discovered on a piece of discarded paper near the wire, on the walkway leading to the rear of the home, and on at least one of three jalousie panes found in a wooded thicket to the rear of the home. The panes had been removed form the rear porch window. Cherry’s blood was consistent with the blood found on the paper and the jalousie.
Cherry was arrested on July 2 at this home. Police noted at that time that Cherry had a cut on his thumb, which he said was the result of having cut the head off a fish.
__________________
Civil disobedience is the active refusal to obey certain laws, demands and commands of a government, or of an occupying power, without resorting to physical violence. It is one of the primary tactics of nonviolent resistance. In its most nonviolent form (known as ahimsa or satyagraha) it could be said that it is compassion in the form of respectful disagreement. | 
06-01-2008, 01:25 PM
