Posted on 09/11/2003 4:59:06 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Dog ate evidence in 'extraordinary' case -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Kimball Perry Post staff reporter
It had everything but Jerry Springer. In a Tuesday trial that drew snickers from the assistant prosecutor, the judge and courthouse workers, a one-legged man was accused by his girlfriend, who weighs more than twice as much as him, of assault during a fight in which the couple -- both married to other people -- were breaking up because she was cheating on the boyfriend with yet another boyfriend.
Vicki Smith said Matthew Long choked her with a dog leash. But the leash wasn't introduced as evidence at trial because the couple's dog ate it.
"This is probably one of the stranger relationships you will see come before the court," Tim Cutcher, Long's attorney, told Common Pleas Court Judge Melba Marsh, who didn't disagree.
"Both are married to other people but they have been living together for the past 1½ years; they are cheating on each other, but you have two different stories."
Smith, who weighs 250 pounds, testified she had been trying to get Long -- her 116-pound boyfriend -- out of her McPherson Street home in Bond Hill for some time.
She said she came home from work April 30 and smoked pot with and had sex with Long, who had moved his things out of the house earlier that day. Smith fell asleep, and when she awoke, she testified, Long was holding a knife to his stomach threatening suicide.
She said the one-legged Long -- "he hops -- he gets around better than you and I," she testified -- then tried to choke her with the dog leash as she tried to flee.
Long, though, testified he loved Smith and begged her to stay with him so he wouldn't have to move back in with his wife.
Long stayed even though Smith, who came to court Tuesday with another man, wanted him out. When she tried to leave, he said, he tried to grab her.
"She just dragged me through the house -- with me hanging on her shirt," Long testified.
"Love does that," he added, prompting a laugh from Assistant Prosecutor Kip Guinan.
The prosecution's case was hurt by an audiotape Cutcher played in court of a telephone message Smith left on the answering machine at the home of Long's wife after Long had agreed to move back in there.
On the tape, Smith asked Long to come home so they could "do it like I don't know what. Hopefully, it will be an all-nighter."
Cutcher also undercut Smith's allegations when he got her to admit on the stand that she could throw Long, whose right leg was amputated 24 years ago at the hip, around "like a rag doll."
Marsh didn't believe Smith, calling her testimony "extraordinary."
The judge found Long not guilty, even though he had agreed to a plea deal in the case in June. Long withdrew the plea when he was told it would result in his probation being revoked on a Texas conviction and send him back to prison to serve out a 12-year sentence there.
Long was on probation after he was convicted of shooting someone in Texas.
If Springer doesn't pick this story up, he's more of an idiot than I already thought he was.
Sounds like something that went down at Gregg's trailerpark!
This is surprising. I didn't think he had a leg to stand on...
The dog ate the evidence, that's the oldest excuse in the book.
$250 x 250 lbs. = The $62,500 Girlfriend. Take the money and run.
Of course he does. "He hops -- he gets around on it better than you or I."
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