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By KENNETH DEAN
Staff Writer

ATHENS – Before jurors were brought into the courtroom, Randall Wayne Mays’ defense team entered a motion to instruct the jury to only be allowed to sentence him to life in prison.

The prosecution team said evidence presented shows Mays is a future danger.

Mays began muttering something about the state has not told the truth.

Mays was found guilty last week of capital murder for the shooting death of Tony Price Ogburn, a Henderson County Sheriff’s deputy, last May. He is also accused of killing Investigator Paul Habelt and injuring Lt. Kevin Harris when the officers responded to a domestic disturbance call where shots had been fired.

In a second motion, Mims filed for a motion for a mistrial, but Judge Carter Tarrance denied both motions.

Tarrance gave each side one hour for their closing arguments after he read the charge including how they can sentence Mays. The choices are life in prison or death by lethal injection.

The following entries were added Monday, May 12, 2008.

The state and defense have closed their cases and Judge Tarrance has recessed for the day so the parties could put together the charge, which will list possible punishment Mays can face. He instructed them again to not talk about the case.

Both sides will give closing arguments Tuesday.

Before closing and outside the presence of the jury Tarrance ruled on three CD ROM disc containing phone conversations between Mays and his wife or Mays and his attorney for appellate review only and were not made part of the testimony.

Mims said he wanted them entered as a matter of record in case there were any questions about the conversations Mays had from the Smith County Jail.

Dorothy Hillis, Mays’ mother, testified that when she left her husband, he went to California and took the children from her and came back to Texas.

She said it was years later before she was able to have anything to do with her children again.

When Mims showed her a picture of a young Mays, she began crying.

When asked if she’s ever been around Mays when his personality was changing, she said yes and that he would “get a wild look in his eyes.”

“He is a good man, a loving father, he loved children and always played with the nieces and nephews and would always give the shirt off his back,” she said.

Mims said it was a possibility her son could be sentenced to die.

“How is that going to make you feel?” he asked the woman.

“I have kept this private …” she said, sobbing.

Walking from the courtroom, she looked at her son with tears streaming down her face, and mouthed she loved him.

“I love you, Mama,” Mays said back.

David Self, a forensic psychiatrist, said he looked at the reports and has interviewed Mays’ family, law enforcement officers who were at the shooting, people around Mays since the shooting and formed an opinion about Mays.

“I believe with certainty Mr. Mays suffers from chronic delusional thinking,” he said.

He said he believed that the illness was the reason the shooting occurred.

Dr. Self said when officers charged, Mays perceived that as a threat. The action triggered the psychosis and led to the shootings, Dr. Self said.

Self said Mays’ two-acre homesite was his sanctuary.

In cross-examination, Mau asked if Dr. Self had ever testified about the future danger of a person who could face the death penalty.

Dr. Self said he would have liked to have interviewed Mays, but looked at all of the records.

“I cannot make a formal diagnosis of a person I haven’t seen,” he said.

Mau asked Self if any of Mays’ family could have lied and said things to shape his opinion.

“It was like pulling eye teeth out of some of these relatives to get these stories about Randall,” he said.

He added that he had a great deal of confidence about his opinion because there were too many contributing sources, including audio tapes, interviews, records and the findings of Dr. Theresa Vail.

When Mays was taken to Terrell State Hospital, it took five officers to get him into the vehicle.

Mau asked if that showed that Mays would continue having problems with uniformed officers.

“Those things are a concern but they are manageable with medications,” Dr. Self said.

Mau then asked if Mays wasn’t taking his medications if he could again have problems with authority, and the doctor said yes.

On redirect, Mims asked if the mental problems contributed to the slaying of the officers.

“I do not think that the capital murder would have occurred on that day if Randall Mays didn’t suffer the mental illness that he does,” he said.

Robert Rudkin testified he hired Mays to refurbish a boat dock.

Rudkin said he considers Mays a friend. “Yes, we have a respect for each other.

Linda Ross, another of Mays’ sisters, testified that her brother, Noble, was mean and made his siblings do things such as huff gas and other substances.

She said growing up they had no supervision because their parents were either asleep or at work.

Mims then said he couldn’t understand what she was saying which prompted her to ask, “You want me to take my teeth out?”

“No she’s not taking her teeth out,” the judge said.

She told the jury that she and Mays did drugs together.

Mims asked if they had a stable home life. She responded by asking, what is “stable?”

Crying from the stand, she said that Mays was her only living brother.

Ross said she has witnessed Mays’ mood change suddenly. She said he is a good man who did a terrible thing.

Dr. Alain Marengo-Rowe said he met Mays about four years ago when he needed repairs on his boat dock.

Dr. Marengo-Rowe said he liked Mays’ work so much that he referred him to family and neighbors.

He said Mays wore a medicated patch on his forehead.

“I asked him why he put that on his head and he said he had headaches,” he said.
Defense Attorney Steve Green asked Dr. Marengo-Rowe to describe Mays.

“He’s just a very gentle and nice person,” the doctor said.

Don Kelly said he used Mays for work at his home in the Mabank area and once sent Mays home due to a severe headache.

“I didn’t even think he was fit to drive, but he did. He was one of the best people who ever worked for me,” he said.

Kelly said he trusted Mays and would hire him again.

Sherry Ross, Mays’ sister, took the stand and talked about the Mays family childhood.

She said another brother, Noble, was executed, her brother, Ray, was killed in a drive-by shooting in 1977 and her brother, Kenneth, died of an overdose.

She said Noble fell out of a pickup truck when he was a child and that he suffered mental illness.

She said she knew Mays had something wrong with him, but she didn’t know what it was. She also said that he changes suddenly.

“He gets this look on his face and sometimes he starts saying things you just don’t know what he’s saying,” she said. “If I was on the phone with him, sometimes I would just hang up.”

She said her brother was peculiar but very loving.

Judge Carter Tarrance recessed the trial for lunch until 1:15 p.m.

Christina White, Mays step-daughter, said she met Mays when she was 15 or 16 when her mother, Candace, and Mays began dating.

“My mother was not a normal type mother I guess you could say. She never drove, she never worked. She had a job at a corny dog stand one time, but she relied on other people to do things that she couldn’t do,” she said.

Mims asked if she knew if Mays and her mother met at a drug rehab or alcoholics anonymous. White she said she didn’t know.

But after Candace and Mays got together she said she didn’t worry about her mother.

“They completed each other. My mother had a purpose,” she said. “I’ll be honest, when I first met him I thought he was a little strange, but my mom is a little strange. I hate to say that, but…”

Mrs. White said Mays loved her children and was always thinking of them and her mother seems lost without her husband.

She recalled one incident in which Mays attempted to reach into the television to apparently wanting to strangle a person who had slapped a woman on a television show.

“I don’t remember what show it was but he got all quiet and was trying to like strangle the person,” she said.

Dr. Theresa Vail, a Tyler psychiatrist, testified she met Mays while treating him at the Smith County Jail where she is under contract to treat inmates.

During her first meeting with Mays, she said she saw a person suffering from such severe depression that he could not take care of himself.

He was also suffering from psychotic episodes where he was hearing voices and seeing things that other people did not see.

She prescribed Mays Zoloft for depression and Rispidol to help with bouts of psychosis.

“He does have a severe mental illness,” she testified after a direct question from the defense.

Mau asked Dr. Vail how Mays seemed on her last visit with him.

“When I did speak to him last he was very delusional but polite,” she said.

Mau said despite the fact Mays had a “mental illness,” Mays had not been on any disability and made his own living and owned his own home.

Mau asked Dr. Vail if a person, such as Mays, having psychosis would go from a cordial conversation to feeling threatened.

“It depends on what was said,” she replied.

She testified the best prediction of future behavior was past behavior.

Mau asked if a person with Mays’ kind of symptoms was closer to the dangerous or non-dangerous side in stressful incidents and the doctor said the more dangerous side.

During his opening remarks in the sentencing phase of the trial, defense attorney Bobby Mims told jury members he is not offering excuses, but an explanation as to why his client, Randall Wayne Mays, killed two Henderson County Sheriff deputies .

Mays was convicted Friday of capital murder for the death of deputy Tony Price Ogburn during a standoff stemming from a domestic dispute. He is also accused of killing Investigator Paul Hablet and injuring Lt. Kevin Harris during the incident last May.

Mims told jurors this morning that they will hear testimony of several doctors and jailers of May’s daily mental illness and his behavior behind bars.

“Folks we know there is going to be a death sentence in this case. The question is whether or not it will be death as a result of life in prison or a death carried out by lethal injection,” he said.

Mims said testimony will show Mays suffered abuse at the hands of his older brother, Noble, who was executed by the state of Texas in 1995 for stabbing a Wichita Falls man to death while robbing him.

“There is nothing you are going to hear that will justify what Randall Mays did,” he said.

This article was last updated on Tuesday, May 13, 2008 at 9:45 a.m. CST