The day their trial was set to begin, two men on Monday pleaded guilty in the shooting of a downtown Charleston nightclub bouncer.
Tasheem Collins, 39, and George Sawyer, 31, both pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the shooting of bouncer Jimmy Beasley on April 26, 2014. In exchange, prosecutors dismissed attempted murder charges the men were facing.
Donna Beasley said her husband was OK with the deals, as he just wanted the court proceedings to come to an end.
"Jimmy just wanted it to be over. He's the one who deals with it the most," she said. "He has to deal with it the rest of his life."
Sawyer pleaded guilty to wanton endangerment and malicious wounding. Kanawha Circuit Judge Jennifer Bailey will sentence him March 2.
He faces one to five years in jail for wanton endangerment and two to 10 years for malicious wounding.
The deal Collins made could allow him to be released from jail almost immediately, his attorney, Richard Holicker, a senior deputy public defender in Kanawha said. Collins entered a Kennedy plea to two counts of wanton endangerment. Under the Kennedy rule, a defendant doesn't admit guilt.
The plea was binding, meaning if Bailey didn't agree to sentence Collins to a year for each count, he could withdraw his plea. After accepting it - although "somewhat reluctantly" she said, Collins was immediately sentenced.
"I think she said she was reluctant because this was a very violent crime," Donna Beasley said after the hearing.
Beasley was shot multiple times at the corner of Kanawha Boulevard and Capitol Street after a confrontation with Collins and Sawyer inside The Cellar nightclub.
The men were kicked out of the bar. Beasley was shot while walking two women to another club, prosecutors said.
Assistant Kanawha Prosecutor Don Morris told the judge Monday that surveillance footage from nearby businesses showed events leading up to the shooting and would have been presented at trial. Bailey had already ruled the two men would stand trial together.
Beasley spent more than two months in the hospital after the shooting. His wife said Monday that he has had to relearn how to walk and talk.
"He can walk short distances. If he loses balance he can catch himself now," she said. "He can talk but he doesn't sound the same. His voice sounds different."
Donna Beasley has attended every court hearing. She said Monday she would have liked to see Collins and Sawyer get a lengthy prison sentence - the maximum. But, she added, a longer sentence wouldn't change what happened to her husband.
"There's no way they could ever pay for what they've done to him," she said.
Reach Kate White at kate.white@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1723 or follow @KateLWhite on Twitter.