Man gets more than 12 years for revenge attack

Thursday, May 24, 2007

By BRENDAN KIRBY
* Staff Reporter*

An outraged federal judge in Mobile sentenced an Axis man to more than
12½ years in prison Wednesday for an assault on an ex-police officer who
had arrested the defendant a decade earlier.

U.S. District Judge William Steele rejected defense attorney Dom Soto's
contention that the Oct. 27 incident at the Feed Store in Axis amounted
to little more than a bar fight. He ordered James Bruce Corley, 38, to
spend 12 years and seven months in prison, the maximum under advisory
sentencing guidelines.

"This was an attack on a law enforcement officer," the judge said. "And
the credible evidence is that it was an unprovoked attack."

Corley smirked at times during the four-hour sentencing but put his bald
head in his hands when he heard the sentence as his relatives sobbed.

The victim of the Oct. 27 attack, Barry Foley, was a Saraland police
officer working as a deputized federal agent in 1996 when he helped
investigate a drug case that led to Corley's arrest and conviction.
Foley, who left law enforcement a short time later and now works at the
Shell chemical refinery in Saraland, testified that he went to the Feed
Store the evening of Oct. 26 to meet a co-worker.

The co-worker ended up not showing. But Corley recognized Foley as the
man who had busted him. Foley testified that he did not recognize Corley
when the defendant confronted him in the men's room. He said he could
see Corley's carotid artery bulging from his neck.

"He appeared to be the angriest person I've ever seen," Foley said.

Foley, who lives in Satsuma, said he quickly left the bar and headed for
his pickup truck. As he fumbled with his keys, he testified, he heard
the gravel shift and turned to find Corley with his right hand balled in
a fist. He said Corley delivered a blow to his head before he even
realized what was happening. Foley testified that Corley, who had
something shiny in his hand, then struck him six to eight more times.

"It was the hardest I've ever been hit in my life," he said. "It was
devastating."

Corley, who pleaded guilty in February to assaulting a law enforcement
officer just before his trial was to begin, told Steele a starkly
different version of the events. He admitted to confronting Foley in the
rest room and pushing him. But he said Foley admitted that he knew the
marijuana Corley was arrested with did not belong to him.

Corley also testified that Foley invited him to the parking lot to
continue the altercation.

The judge said he found Corley's story amounted to perjury and thus
enhanced the sentence by more than two years.

Much of Wednesday's hearing dealt with disputed details of the assault.
Although Corley admitted to striking Foley, he denied that he used a
weapon or that the victim suffered serious bodily injury -- both factors
that in the end the judge used to lengthen his sentence.

Soto, the defense attorney, noted that Foley spent only a few hours in
the emergency room and suffered no lasting physical injury. He also
challenged Foley about the former officer's testimony that he saw Corley
holding something shiny in his fist during the assault. Foley did not
mention anything about an object until days after the incident.

Foley testified that he did not remember that detail until later.

Dr. Richard Oyler, who treated Foley at Springhill Medical Center,
testified that the nature of the cuts on the victim's face made it
impossible for them to have been caused by a fist. He said he did not
know for sure what the object was but added that it most likely had an
edge.

"I think he's lucky to be alive, being hit in the head the way he was,"
Oyler said.

Another witness, Gentry Garrett, a waitress at the Feed Store on the
night of the assault, testified that Corley asked her if she knew
whether Foley was still a cop and later bragged that he had beaten him.

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