A new plea offer was discussed and negotiated offstage when Marc Wilson appeared in court Friday in preparation for his possible trial three weeks from now on felony murder and other charges from the June 2020 shooting death of Haley Hutcheson.

The contents of the offer were not made public, and the Bulloch County Superior Court trial is still scheduled for jury selection beginning Aug. 22. However, Chief Assistant District Attorney Barclay Black said in open court that the state had made a definite offer to which Hutcheson's family members apparently did not object, and at the end of the day Wilson's lead attorney, Francys Johnson, said the defense was "encouraged" by what they had heard.

Judge Ronnie Thompson also offered Wilson an opportunity to enter a plea Aug. 17 before moving forward with the trial.

All of that was aired in the improvised downstairs courtroom at the Judicial Annex in a few minutes around 3 p.m. Friday, after talks that began shortly after 9 a.m. and occurred mostly out of earshot of reporters. Wilson and his defense attorneys – Johnson, Martha Hall and Nefertara Clark – met behind closed doors in the grand jury room with the state’s prosecutors, Black and Ogeechee Judicial Circuit District Attorney Daphne Totten.

Wilson’s defense lawyers at times called in his parents and other family members into the grand jury  room or met with  them outside, and Black and  Totten at times spoke softly to  Hutcheson’s  father, stepmother and other family  members inside the courtroom.

The 3 p.m. wrap-up followed a long-delayed lunch break.

“I will just say …  without getting into details, that the last details of our plea discussions … that we all discussed at the table, I have had an opportunity to discuss with the family and we will still stand behind those last details,” Black told the judge.

Johnson then indicated that he knew what those details were.

“Your Honor, on behalf of the defense, we know what they are, and we’re encouraged that we’re in a better place than we were when we started today,” Johnson said. “We appreciate the court for calling us together and the state for their efforts to try to resolve this.”

Change of tone

It was an unusually amicable moment in a racially charged, emotionally fraught case that began with a deadly encounter between the young occupants of two vehicles on Veterans Memorial Parkway, Statesboro’s bypass, in the early moments of June 14, 2020.

Spinoffs from the main case included the previously assigned judge having Johnson removed from the courtroom for what that judge said was contempt of court, that judge’s ordered recusal from the case after a hearing process, and recently, the Georgia Court of Appeals’ clearing Johnson by reversing the contempt order.

Witnesses at earlier hearings testified that Wilson, while driving his car on the bypass around 1 a.m. that Sunday, fired a handgun and that a bullet struck Hutcheson, 17, in the back of the head as she rode in a pickup truck with four other teenagers from Claxton.

But the defense attorneys have asserted that Wilson, who is biracial, was defending himself and his white then-girlfriend who was in the car with him from a racist attack, including shouting of slurs, throwing of beer cans and aggressive driving, by occupants of the truck.

Wilson, from Sharpsburg but with Statesboro family connections, was 21 when the shooting occurred. Sought by Statesboro police, he returned with his father three days later, turned himself in at the Bulloch County Jail to face charges and also surrendered his handgun.

A grand jury later returned an indictment charging him with one count of felony murder, five counts of aggravated assault and one count of possessing a firearm while committing a felony.

Denied bond by the previous judge, Wilson, now 23, previously spent more than 20 months in the jail but has been out under “house arrest” conditions since posting a $100,000 bond that Thompson set in early March.

Not a ‘Frye hearing’

Friday, the judge entered the courtroom at 9 a.m. for what was slated as a final hearing to prepare for trial. He said it was “like the roundup before the jury trial” and asked the attorneys for both sides if they wanted some time to talk.

Johnson then asked if, after that discussion, Thompson wanted to do “a formal Frye hearing.”  Named for a defendant in a Missouri case whose lawyer failed to inform him of plea offers, this would be a hearing to put any offers on the record with both sides present. No Frye hearing was actually held Friday, but Thompson said one would be held before trial.

“But I encourage y’all to talk because this is really the last chance you’ll get before the trial,” he told the attorneys.

Noting that Wilson is facing “a very serious matter, the judge noted that a trial could result in acquittal, conviction, or “a hung jury,” in other words the failure of a jury to reach a unanimous decision, which can lead to a retrial. He alluded to the range of punishment providing “really not a whole lot of discretion for the court at that time if he is found guilty of the charge.”

Limited choices

Thompson did not specify, but as seen in other cases, the only sentencing possibilities Georgia law provides for a non-capital murder conviction are a life sentence with the possibility of parole or a life sentence without the possibility of parole. For crimes committed after July 1, 2006 resulting in a life sentence, the earliest that parole can be considered is after 30 years, the State Board of Pardons and Paroles website states.

Alternative homicide charges that could be considered in a plea deal include voluntary manslaughter, which carries a sentencing range of 1-20 years, and involuntary manslaughter, which carries a range of 1-10 years. But nobody in court Friday said that.

“I will be available like 2 o’clock or afterward on August the 17th if y’all want to tender a plea at that time, but other than that I don’t have any available time,” Thompson  told the attorneys.