Teh One Who Knocks
08-22-2012, 02:17 PM
By Jamie Satterfield - Knoxville News Sentinel
A jury on Tuesday turned a cold shoulder to a Knoxville man's claims he was justified in punching an assistant manager at a fast-food restaurant after a dispute over a hot fudge sundae.
And, as it turned out, that $1 sundae will cost James Davis Wilson, 43, $1,050 in fines and the possibility of jail time.
An eight-woman, four-man jury in Knox County Criminal Court convicted Wilson of misdemeanor assault and disorderly conduct after an hour of deliberations Tuesday evening and fined him $1,050. Judge Bob McGee set a Sept. 27 sentencing hearing. Wilson faces a maximum jail term of just one day shy of a year in what began as a fuss over fudge sauce, according to Assistant District Attorney General Eric Counts.
It was February 2010 when Wilson rolled up at the McDonald's restaurant on Magnolia Avenue and ordered lunch.
"The food appeared to be right, but the dessert, it had chocolate on the bottom," Wilson told jurors. "The hot fudge should be on top. It freezes up when you get fudge on the bottom of it. I asked them to redo it."
Assistant Manager Brad Skelton insisted Wilson was gaming to save a dime — the difference between the dollar menu "plain sundae" sans hot fudge sauce and an actual hot fudge sundae.
Sauce or no sauce, the pair verbally sparred before Skelton gave Wilson his dollar back.
What happened next was the crux of the case, which Wilson has pushed from misdemeanor court, through a grand jury and all the way to Criminal Court.
As Wilson headed toward the exit, Skelton darted toward a side door facing the exit.
"I just wanted to make sure he actually (left)," Skelton said. "I took two more steps out the door, and he hit me in the face."
Wilson insisted, via defense attorney Mary Ward, Skelton "charged" Wilson and called him a racial slur.
"He was acting in self-defense," Ward argued.
Noting Skelton was a white man half the size of Wilson, a black man, in a restaurant packed with black patrons, Counts dismissed Wilson's account with the rhetorical query, "Are you insane?"
A jury on Tuesday turned a cold shoulder to a Knoxville man's claims he was justified in punching an assistant manager at a fast-food restaurant after a dispute over a hot fudge sundae.
And, as it turned out, that $1 sundae will cost James Davis Wilson, 43, $1,050 in fines and the possibility of jail time.
An eight-woman, four-man jury in Knox County Criminal Court convicted Wilson of misdemeanor assault and disorderly conduct after an hour of deliberations Tuesday evening and fined him $1,050. Judge Bob McGee set a Sept. 27 sentencing hearing. Wilson faces a maximum jail term of just one day shy of a year in what began as a fuss over fudge sauce, according to Assistant District Attorney General Eric Counts.
It was February 2010 when Wilson rolled up at the McDonald's restaurant on Magnolia Avenue and ordered lunch.
"The food appeared to be right, but the dessert, it had chocolate on the bottom," Wilson told jurors. "The hot fudge should be on top. It freezes up when you get fudge on the bottom of it. I asked them to redo it."
Assistant Manager Brad Skelton insisted Wilson was gaming to save a dime — the difference between the dollar menu "plain sundae" sans hot fudge sauce and an actual hot fudge sundae.
Sauce or no sauce, the pair verbally sparred before Skelton gave Wilson his dollar back.
What happened next was the crux of the case, which Wilson has pushed from misdemeanor court, through a grand jury and all the way to Criminal Court.
As Wilson headed toward the exit, Skelton darted toward a side door facing the exit.
"I just wanted to make sure he actually (left)," Skelton said. "I took two more steps out the door, and he hit me in the face."
Wilson insisted, via defense attorney Mary Ward, Skelton "charged" Wilson and called him a racial slur.
"He was acting in self-defense," Ward argued.
Noting Skelton was a white man half the size of Wilson, a black man, in a restaurant packed with black patrons, Counts dismissed Wilson's account with the rhetorical query, "Are you insane?"