A murder trial slated to happen later this month has been postponed to 2025, primarily because an appropriate space was not made available for a psychiatric evaluation at the Greene County Jail on Aug. 1, the day a doctor made the trip from St. Louis to the Springfield jail.
Lilburn Motley, 69, is charged with first-degree murder, unlawful possession of a firearm and armed criminal action. He is accused of shooting and killing his longtime girlfriend Lavona Haddock in Springfield in December of 2021.
The trial was supposed to begin Aug. 26 in Greene County Judge Jerry Harmison’s courtroom.
Darryl Garner, Motley’s defense attorney, filed a motion for continuance on Aug. 5, citing the need to reschedule his client’s court-ordered psychiatric evaluation due to the failed attempt on Aug. 1.
With no objection from the prosecutor, Harmison granted Garner’s motion at a hearing Aug. 7, and rescheduled Motley’s trial to begin March 24, 2025.
In his motion for a continuance and at the hearing, Garner explained what happened with the psychiatrist trying to meet Motley at the jail.
According to Garner, Dr. Alexander Bernard Rose traveled from St. Louis to Springfield to be at the Greene County Jail at 8 a.m. Aug. 1 — the time and date specified in an order from the court to the jail staff.
When Dr. Rose arrived, he was told the room set aside for such exams was already occupied by another doctor and an inmate. Garner said Rose waited around until about 11 a.m. Without seeing Motley, Rose headed back to St. Louis.
“It’s about $3,000 flushed down the toilet to get this guy here,” Garner said in court. “The jail was not prepared to let a psychiatrist in to see Mr. Motley. …
“The bottom line was they had no place prepared for them. They sent me a long letter telling me it wasn’t scheduled,” Garner said. “Thirty-six days earlier the court sent them an order that said the date and the time, so I don’t know what they expected me to do on that. But clearly, they think it’s all my fault that they weren’t ready for this exam.”
According to publicly-available online court records, Judge Harmison issued the following order on June 27, 2024:
“The Greene County Sheriff is ordered to permit Dr. Alexander Bernard Rose entry into the Greene County Jail and access to (Motley) for interview on August 1, 2024, beginning at 8:00 AM and continuing until complete …”
Sheriff spokesperson says attorney or doctor should have made appointment
Dep. Derek James, public information officer for the Greene County Sheriff’s Office, said in an email that neither Garner nor Rose reached out to jail staff to make an appointment for Motley’s evaluation.
Asked if appointments are required when a judge issues an order that includes a specific time and date for the evaluation, James responded via email that “court orders like that don’t always get sent to us and meetings like that still have to be scheduled by the attorney/public defender or the professional coming to visit to ensure we can accommodate due to limited contact visit places.”
Dep. James responded to questions from the Daily Citizen with the following:
“We require an appointment to be made in advance so we can coordinate our many daily professional visits.We have over 900 inmates and many professionals come to our jail daily to see inmates in person. This includes public defenders, private attorneys, law clerks, paralegals, doctors, probation/parole, children division, paralegals, different law enforcement agencies, many volunteer organizations, mental health agencies, Health Department, bondsmans, court services and more.
“We have many meeting spaces throughout the facility to accommodate these professional visits.Most of these areas are non-contact visitation areas.We primarily use non contact visitation areas to help prevent the spread of contraband and diseases such as COVID. Since many of these visits must be done in a private manor we can safely allow visitors to have face to face contact with inmates in our custody without the need for us to monitor the visit to prevent contraband from entering our facility, prevent assaults on our professional visitors etc. We do have limited spaces for contact visits.We only grant contact visits for special circ*mstances.
“The appointments ensure we have spaces and time slots reserved for each visitor. We have robust video visit capabilities that many attorneys/doctors/other professionals can access throughout the day/evenings on top of our in person spaces.
“We were tightly booked on the day in question with multiple visits going on simultaneously throughout the facility. Since this doctor did not have an appointment our command staff met with him in person and made special accommodations for him to conduct his evaluation. He was offered the in person and video options but declined the video option. There were limitations in the morning to the contact visitation areas as these areas were already booked by other professionals. We accommodated him the best we could given the circ*mstances.
“The Greene County Jail is committed to provide access in multiple ways for professionals to visit inmates in our custody and do what we can when issues like this arise.We have provided 5,496 successful professional visits so far in 2024.”
Attorney: ‘The doctor just went home’
Garner explained at Wednesday’s hearing that jail staff tried to make the examination happen on Aug.1 by setting up a visitation room. However, Rose and Motley were separated by a glass partition and couldn’t hear each other well.
“It was just not workable,” Garner said. “The doctor just went home.”
Garner said the other psychiatrist who was using the exam room with another inmate “wisely” called jail staff ahead of time to confirm the room would be available. Garner argued calling ahead is not necessary when there is a court order that specifies the time and date of the examination.
Following the hearing, Garner explained to the Springfield Daily Citizen that the psychiatrist waited around for a few hours, hoping the room would become available. But these types of examinations can take up to eight hours, so Rose headed back to St. Louis.
“I do need to have the psych eval [of Motley] for a lot of different reasons,” Garner said.
The relatively-new Greene County Jail opened in 2022. The 360,000-square-foot jail can house about 1,242 inmates and cost about $150 million dollars to construct, according to previous reporting by the Daily Citizen.
Voters passed a half-cent sales tax in 2017 to help fund construction of a new jail and a new home for the sheriff’s office on West Division Street.
Garner also cited a family emergency in his motion for a continuance. Following the hearing, Garner said he’s had a death in his family.
The case against Lilburn Motley
According to a probable cause statement filed in Motley’s case, officers with the Springfield Police Department responded to a home on the 2000 block of North Marion Avenue on the afternoon of Dec. 6, 2021, and found 60-year-old Haddock deceased.
Motley and another witness were also inside the home.
Officers allegedly located a pistol near Motley and determined Motley was physically disabled and needed assistance to move. Officers also reportedly noticed the smell of alcohol when speaking with Motley.
Motley allegedly told officers he’d been in a relationship with Haddock for 37 years, but they were not married.
In talking with police, Motley allegedly said, “I made a mistake tonight, I know I’m gonna get in trouble.”
Motley allegedly first claimed he accidentally pulled the trigger as he was putting the gun under his pillow on the couch where he slept, and that he didn’t realize it was loaded.
He then allegedly told officers he was angry because Haddock was “running her mouth” about “everything.”
“(Motely) said when they watch TV he will give in and let her watch what she wants, but she won’t give in and let him watch what he wants,” the officer wrote in the probable cause statement.
‘I just shot her to shut her up’
Motley allegedly told the police he’d consumed about “10 mini’s and a couple of beers.”
“Motley then stated, ‘I just shot her to shut her up then,’” the officer wrote in the report, in part. “He said she mouths all the time. I asked him what was different about it today. He replied, ‘I was tired.’ I asked what he was tired of and he replied, ‘Her mouth.’”
The other witness in the house reportedly told police Motley and Haddock were sitting on couches and arguing, which was normal. The witness reportedly said he had turned his back to them to play a game, heard a gunshot, and turned to see Haddock appearing lifeless. He told police he looked at Motley and saw Motley was holding a gun under a pillow on the couch.
