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By DAPHNE HUTCHINSON
Rappahannock News Staff Writer
Eleven jurors believed that Diane Kidwell was acting in self-defense when she fired the shotgun blast that killed Ranee Spellman on November 9, 1982. One juror did not.
After eight hours of deliberations last Friday, the panel announced it could not break the deadlock and at 11:15 p.m., Circuit Court Judge Thomas Home declared a mistrial. A hearing has been set for May 10 in Leesburg to determine if and where she should be retried.
The panel split 11 for acquittal and one for conviction of voluntary manslaughter; a crime that carries a penalty of one to ten years in prison or up to 12 months in jail and/or a fine of $1,000.
“The defense was selfdefense,” explained foreman Eugene Leggett, in an interview in the Rappahannock News office late Friday night after the jury was excused. The majority of the panel belieyed that the 43 year old mother of four was “aft-aid for her life” when she shot Spellman in the culmination of a right-ofway dispute between the Kidwells and Patricia Saltonstall, who employed the deceased as farm manager at her Points of View Farml near Flint Hill. I
At the time of the shooting, Spellman was operating a bulldozer on the disputed right-of-way which serves the Kidwell’s property and three lots belonging to Saltonstall. According to testimony, he twice drove the 41,000 pound machine right up to where Kidwell was sitting in a pick-up truck parked across the right-ofway, pushing dirt under the right fender and threatening to roll her truck over if she didn’t move.
“Most people don’t realize, unless they’ve had experience with heavy equipment, the power—psychological and real—of a big bulldozer,” the jury foreman said, explaining that a majority of the panel viewed the bulldozer as a weapon. “It was a weapon in World War II and a very effective one, more effective than tanks,” said Leggett, “That was a scarey position she was in.”
With its blade up, a bulldozer is essentially bullet proof, he noted. American forces in the Pacific, where Leggett served in the war, would drive bulldozers to where Japanese soldiers were dug into trenches, “drop the blade and scrape them out,” he said. Leggett
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