State v. Saunders

NEELY, Chief Justice:

“The Hill” in downtown Beckley, West Virginia is a rough part of town. Its bars, poolrooms, speakeasies, and disco joints cater to an evening sub-culture that emerges at night to the dismay of the ordinary, law-abiding citizen. It was outside of one of “The Hill’s” establishments, the Nite Flite, that on 29 November 1981 the appellant, Robert Saunders, fatally shot Phillip Kincannon in the left buttocks, a wound from which Mr. Kincannon later bled to death on a pool table. Our appellant insists that by shooting Mr. Kincannon he was defending his brother, James Saunders.…