OFFICER'S PRIVILEGE: THE COL. GEORGE MARECEK STORY

Trial and Error

The first trial ended in 1995 with a hung jury when one lone juror, Hicks would later say, held out for acquittal. Two years later, prosecutors again trudged into court, and this time, the jury voted unanimously to convict the highly decorated military man, but not of first-degree murder as prosecutors had hoped. He was convicted of second-degree murder, and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

But the defense had argued that the state's case was rife with what it called hearsay testimony. That testimony, the defense argued was leavened with tales from neighbors and friends who described Viparet as a frightened woman and then backed up their conclusions with litanies of facts about the marriage that she had shared with them. Marecek appealed, and in 1998, the North Carolina Court of Appeals overturned the conviction and ordered a new trial. In effect, the three-judge panel decided that the trial judge had been within his rights to allow the witnesses to testify to Viparet's state of mind, but that the judge had erred in allowing the witnesses to recount Viparet's statements about the reason for her fear.

"The truth was, the appeals court never liked this case," Hicks recently told the Crime Library. All the same, in 2000, the state once again reassembled its prosecution team - Hicks by that time had left the DA's office for private practice and was hired back as a consultant, and returned to court.

This time, however, they were facing a more formidable defense.