Shady Justice? Some say state nailed the wrong man for killing Phillip Gillins. BY KERA ABRAHAM It took a private investigator four hours in early June to do what Eugene detectives couldn't achieve in a year: Find Ryan Joyce, a young man present at the June 2005 fight that left 22-year-old UO student Phillip Gillins dead. Joyce is an eyewitness who could add critical new testimony to a conflicting record of events. But the state had already found Darrell Sky Walker guilty of the crime. In April a jury convicted him of manslaughter and assault, and Circuit Court Judge Gregory Foote sentenced him to more than six years in prison. Still, the story's not over. After his conviction Walker retained a new attorney, Daniel Goff, who on June 16 made a motion for a new trial. Joyce, wearing a hooded gray sweatshirt, cited his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, but Judge Foote granted Goff until June 30 to file a mandamus to compel Joyce to testify. Darrell Sky Walker Meanwhile a group of witnesses are crying foul, alleging that the state has pinned the wrong man. Two crews of three men in their early 20s clashed near Taylor's Bar on 13th Avenue in the wee hours of June 10, 2005. Joyce and Walker were hanging out with their buddy Bryan "J.D." Beall, and Gillins was with friends Jeremiah Crider and Anthony Boulis. All of them were drunk, having had roughly 10 drinks each that night. The beef began around 1 or 2 a.m. when, according to Boulis' statement to police, Joyce elbowed his way past Gillins, and Gillins called him a "wigger" (pejorative slang meaning "white nigger"). These are undisputed facts about what happened next, according to witness testimonies: Beall, Walker, and Joyce headed down 13th, looking to confront Gillins and his friends. When they found them in the alley near Hodgepodge, a shirtless Walker approached them aggressively, asking who had called Joyce the name. Gillins stepped forward and said, "I did." Someone punched Gillins hard in the face. Gillins stiffened and fell straight back, hitting his head hard on the pavement, and lay there unconscious. Walker and Crider then exchanged punches, and Walker chased Crider down the alley. Beall remained standing over Gillins, plucked the hat off the unconscious man's head and put it on his own. Jessica Bloomfeldt, who had also been drinking at Taylor's, stumbled upon the scene. She saw Walker chasing Crider, Gillins on the ground and Beall standing nearby. She asked Beall what had happened. "I just knocked him out," Beall replied, according to her testimony. Two other passers-by, Loren Roberti and John Banks, who had also been drinking, saw Gillins on the ground. Roberti went to help Gillins, turning him on his side while he bled from his head and mouth. She testified that Beall, standing over Gillins, said: "He can fucking die for all I care." When an ambulance arrived, Joyce, Beall and Walker ran to Walker's nearby apartment, taking Beall's case of Pabst with them. Two days later, Gillins died of brain injuries at Sacred Heart hospital. The assailants fled Eugene. Walker went to Southern California but turned himself in about a month later, after the court put out a warrant for his arrest. Beall left town but later returned and, attorney beside him, refused to testify, taking the Fifth. Joyce, apparently, was nowhere to be found. Despite numerous witness statements alleging that Beall had admitted to throwing the fatal punch, the court never issued a warrant for Beall's arrest. "We have no corroborating evidence at all," said District Attorney Doug Harcleroad. "That's not enough to move forward. There were eyewitnesses who said it was Walker." Those eyewitnesses were Gillins' friends Crider and Boulis, who, according to police reports, reeked of booze and slurred their speech when they spoke to EPD on the night of the assault. They both told detectives they'd seen two black men and one white man confront them in that alley — but Beall and Joyce are white, and Walker is black. Boulis and Crider testified at the trial that they were "one hundred percent certain" it was Walker who had punched Gillins. Yet Crider admitted that he hadn't actually seen the impact; he only saw Walker yelling at Gillins and then saw Gillins go down. "We were, you know, just like, 'Wow, what happened?'" Crider testified. "I was a little bit confused with the adrenaline going on." Boulis' testimony has similar holes. He doesn't remember Walker pushing Crider, "but I remember everything from there on," he said. Asked what Beall was doing at the time, Boulis replied, "I was concentrating on Sky [Walker], not him." The defense's witnesses offered a more consistent story: Beall had told them he, not Walker, knocked Gillins out. There was Bloomfeldt, who had stumbled upon the scene to find Beall bragging about his knockout punch. Then there was Beall's long-time friend James Butler, who met up with the assailants at Walker's apartment after the fight, sober. "And that's when J.D. told me that he had knocked somebody out," he testified. Walker's roommate, Elliot Spear, said he'd been woken up by the men's loud, drunken voices. "I heard J.D.'s voice, which is very distinct … say that he had knocked out a kid," he testified. Sydney Lighty, who had been dating Beall "on and off" for about six years, testified that Beall solemnly confessed to her in late June 2005 that "there was a fight … [He] landed a punch. The person fell. And then he told me that he [Gillins] had died." One other witness, Jason Brooks, didn't testify in court, but he told EW that he had also been at Walker's apartment with the crew after the fight. "They told me that J.D. hit him," he alleged. "We were up 'til 6 in the morning, and they each told me separately." Beall was wearing Gillins' hat like a trophy, Brooks said. In court, Walker admitted that he'd been drinking, had been aggressive, had peeled off his shirt and confronted the trio in the alley, "popping off at the mouth." But he insisted that it was Beall who reached over his shoulder and punched Gillins in the face. As Walker drew a diagram of the fight, defense attorney David Lesh noted that Walker is left-handed. Earlier in the trial, the state medical examiner had said that Gillins had likely been hit by a right-handed punch. "I did not touch Mr. Gillins," Walker said. "Did not punch him … Did not lay a finger on Mr. Gillins." "Who did?" Lesh asked. "J.D. Beall." The jury found Walker guilty of manslaughter and two counts of assault. Judge Foote sentenced him to 75 months in prison. But Sterling Alexander with the Salem NAACP maintains that the conviction is shady. "There were six people involved in an incident that night, five white men and one black man, and the black man was convicted," he said. "If law enforcement is hearing that J.D. is the guy who hit [Gillins], why didn't they pursue that?" DA Harcleroad emphasized that a jury has handed down a verdict and for now, Walker's conviction stands. "This investigation isn't over," he added, "and if additional information comes to our attention, we'll process it and use it however we can."
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