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Frazier's attorneys ask S.C. court for third trial
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Published: November 18, 2009
COLUMBIA, S.C. - Attorneys for a Winston-Salem man convicted twice of killing his lover's husband on a popular South Carolina beach argued yesterday that he should get yet another trial because the evidence against him is so weak.
Katherine Hudgins told state Supreme Court justices during a hearing in Columbia that prosecutors can't even connect a murder weapon to John Boyd Frazier, 40, or prove that he was ever at the scene of the shooting in Myrtle Beach.
"Being close to the crime scene is simply not enough," Hudgins said.
Authorities say that Frazier and his lover, Renee Poole, conspired to kill her husband, Brent Poole, 23, of Mocksville, as the Poole couple walked along the beach in 1998 on their third wedding anniversary.
Brent Poole's killing sparked fears that tourists were being targeted, rattling nerves along South Carolina's bustling coastline until suspects were arrested. The tale was the basis for Dance of Death, a true-crime novel by Dale Hudson, an author whose body was found earlier this year in a South Carolina river. Authorities said that Hudson drowned accidentally.
Frazier was convicted of murder in 2000, but the state's high court overturned the conviction, contending that the judge made errors.
During a second trial in 2005, Frazier was convicted again and sentenced to 30 years in prison. The state Court of Appeals overturned his armed-robbery conviction, and defense attorneys say that justices should now throw out his murder conviction and give him a third chance in court.
The gun that was used to kill Brent Poole was never found.
The court will rule later on Frazier's appeal.
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