Source: Houston Chronicle Contact: Pubdate: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 Page: 1 Website: http://www.chron.com/ OILFIELD WORKER CONVICTED OF KILLING LIBERTY WOMAN By Steve Olafson LIBERTY Led away in shackles after being declared guilty of capital murder Thursday, Robert Brice Morrow predicted a jury will sentence him to death. "This is Liberty County. You can expect it," he said. Jurors deliberated an hour and 15 minutes before finding the 39yearold oilfield worker guilty of murdering Myra Elisabeth "Lisa" Allison on April 3, 1996. The 21yearold college student was beaten and slashed after being abducted from a local car wash. The jury of six men and six women will hear testimony in the punishment phase of the case Monday. Prosecutors are expected to seek the death penalty. Morrow, a high school dropout and crack cocaine user with a criminal record in three states, expected the verdict. Steve Hebert, one of Morrow's two attorneys, said he told his client to expect bad news after the jury sent word that it had reached a quick decision. Morrow showed little reaction at the verdict while Allison family members wept and hugged. "We're pleased with the jury's decision. I'll have more to say after the punishment phase," said Mike Allison, the victim's father. The murder investigation and subsequent trial dominated much of the public discourse during the past year in Liberty, a quiet town of 8,000 that serves as the county seat. The victim, a University of NevadaLas Vegas student who was studying hotel management, came from a prominent family that established Liberty's only funeral home in 1947. Her father, a certified public accountant, had served on the City Council and her mother is a schoolteacher. Morrow's trial, which included seamy details of Liberty County's crack cocaine subculture, drew packed courtrooms in the final days of the twoweek proceeding. Morrow, who briefly served as his own attorney after firing his lawyers but then asked that they be reinstated, gambled by deciding to testify in the final two days of his trial. He was battered during a fourhour cross examination, but insisted he was a victim of circumstance and never had met the murder victim, whose body was found in the Trinity River the day after she disappeared. Morrow claimed his only mistake was taking up with a trio of crack cocaine users who were using the Allison family's 1988 Oldsmobile that the victim had taken to a car wash, where she was abducted. Morrow asserted that he was shot in the leg during a fight over a crack pipe while he was in the car, but that he never saw Allison the night she was killed. His attorneys offered little substantive testimony to support his story. Prosecutors, meanwhile, presented a witness who told the jury that a man matching Morrow's description accosted Allison at the car wash. Other state witnesses said Morrow had spoken of plans to victimize lone women at the car wash and later talked in jail of the actual murder. DNA blood evidence, moreover, tied Morrow to the Oldsmobile, which was partially reconstructed and placed in the courtroom as one of the state's 198 exhibits. He maintained, however, that his blood was in the car because of his injury during the fight over the crack pipe, not because of a struggle with Allison. At one point during deliberations Thursday, the jury went into the courtroom and spent about 10 minutes examining the car's interior, where prosecutors had placed tape to mark spots where blood stains were found. District Attorney Mike Little, during his summation, moved some members of the jury and the courtroom gallery to tears while he took a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his own eyes. "He turned that beautiful young woman into this," he said, showing the jury closeup photos of the woman's battered face. "This is his creation." Little called Morrow a liar and a coward. But lead defense attorney Gary Bunyard said some of the state's witnesses, many of them crack cocaine users with criminal records, lacked credibility. "We're talking about a series of individuals who are just flat in a different world than John Q. Public," Bunyard said. "We're talking about individuals who would sell out their mother for the next hit of cocaine." Morrow remained defiant after the verdict. As he was led to a van that would take him back to jail, where he has been in custody since July 1996, he complained that some testimony had been kept from the jury. "They covered this case up," he said. Morrow was referring to testimony from the stepdaughter of presiding state District Judge W.G. "Dub" Woods and her former husband, Houston lawyer David S. Prince. The stepdaughter, Charlotte Haidusek, testified with the jury out of the courtroom that Prince told her that two hit men he had hired to kill her had mistakenly killed the wrong woman apparently Lisa Allison. Haidusek also testified that Prince later told her he was only joking. Prosecutors objected to the testimony and Judge Woods ruled it inadmissible in Morrow's trial. Morrow's aunt, 52yearold Marylou Miles, also complained that the smalltown judicial system had resulted in an unfair verdict and that her nephew's lawyers were ineffective. "This should have been a Houston case something out of town," she said. A member of the Allison family, meanwhile, expressed relief that those closest to Lisa Allison would soon see an end to the murder case. "I think this is the first time in well over a year they'll get some sleep tonight," said Liberty County Constable Tim Allison, who was the victim's cousin.