Dec 11, 2007 10:00 pm US/Eastern
Elderly Suspect In Officer's Death Hospitalized
PHILADELPHIA (AP) ―
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William Barnes (File)
CBS
A 71-year-old man charged with murder four decades after he shot a police officer was hospitalized Tuesday, forcing the postponement of his preliminary hearing.
Instead of being transported from prison to court, William Barnes, 71, was taken to a Northeast Philadelphia hospital after he told prison officials he felt dizzy and had fainted.
Judge Bradley Moss said an emergency room doctor at Frankford Hospital's Torresdale campus reported that Barnes was alert and in stable condition.
The judge said doctors had not immediately discovered any medical problem. Barnes, who has suffered two recent heart attacks, would be discharged and returned to prison on Wednesday if no problem was found.
The preliminary hearing will happen Friday afternoon if Barnes is feeling better and defense attorney Bobby Hoof can reschedule prior commitments, Moss said. Otherwise, it will take place Feb. 26.
Rookie police officer Walter T. Barclay, 23, was responding to a reported burglary when Barnes shot him on Nov. 27, 1966. Barclay, left paralyzed from the waist down, died Aug. 19 at age 64.
A medical examiner ruled that Barclay succumbed to an infection linked to the 41-year-old gunshot wounds. Barnes -- who served a 15-year sentence for attempted murder in the case -- was charged with murder and remains held without bail.
Barclay's family said the former officer endured a life of pain, pneumonia, bedsores and infections because of the shooting and they believe Barnes should be prosecuted for murder. Barclay's sister, Rosalyn Harrison, has said her brother's life effectively ended when he was paralyzed at 23.
Though he spent most of his life behind bars, Barnes was living in a halfway house and working at a supermarket at the time of his arrest. He also was lecturing in Temple University urban studies classes and at Eastern State Penitentiary, now a museum, about his life and regrets as a career criminal.
Barnes' youngest brother called him "a tough young kid from Germantown who made all the wrong choices" but turned his life around.
"It's not minimizing the pain that the officer and his family went through all those years," Jimmy Barnes, 54, said outside of court. "But it's 41 years later. My brother is an old man. He's had two heart attacks, and he's already been tried for this and served time for it."
He said their mother "lit candles for that officer and his family, prayed for them every day, till her dying breath at 83 years old."
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