Schizophrenic man gets 30 years for killing Portsmouth nursing home resident with a brick

April 14--PORTSMOUTH -- A Portsmouth man who once attacked a woman with an ax -- nearly killing her -- pleaded guilty this week to murdering a man with a brick.

Michael Coker, 59, was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

The guilty plea came Monday in Circuit Court, four days after his defense attorney asked the court to dismiss all charges on the grounds her client's right to a speedy trial had been violated.

Before pleading guilty, Coker dropped the motion.

Coker, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who had previously claimed he was not guilty due to insanity, was arrested June 12 in connection with the death of Idoius Copeland. Both he and Copeland were residents of the Westhaven Manor assisted-living facility.

Coker told police he beat Copeland in the head with a brick because Copeland owed him $40. Witnesses heard "loud thump sounds" before finding Copeland unresponsive, according to a probable cause summary filed in General District Court.

A General District judge found there was probable cause Aug. 18 to support a charge of first-degree murder, and a grand jury indicted him Sept. 1.

In Circuit Court, however, the case ran into a road block. The court's three judges recused themselves Dec. 5 after learning Coker was the uncle of an employee of the Portsmouth circuit clerk's office. The trial had been set to start two days later.

Retired Judge Edward Hansen Jr. wasn't assigned to the case until the next month, and a trial was eventually set to start Monday.

If a defendant is in custody, Virginia law generally requires a trial to start within five months of a preliminary hearing date -- unless the defense was somehow to blame for the delay.

The five months in Coker's case would have run up last month, according to Senior Assistant Public Defender Lakishi Stevenson's math.

Coker's record includes convictions for robbery, burglary and illegal use of a firearm in 1978 and aggravated malicious wounding in 1995.

The malicious wounding charge stemmed from an assault outside a Food Lion parking lot in the Churchland area. It exposed part of the victim's brain.

Coker crept up behind her with an ax and knocked her to the ground with one blow. He then stood over her and hit her four times with the sharp edge before riding away on a bicycle.

Coker initially told police he picked Tammie Wainwright at random because he wanted to go back to prison, where there was better medication for his mental illness. But he changed his story twice, first saying that Wainwright came at him in the parking lot and then that he overdosed on a drug that made him feel ill and hear voices.

After Coker's conviction, Wainwright said she hoped he'd be "put away where he could never, ever hurt anyone else," according to Pilot articles at the time.

"It is my opinion that when he is released, he will do the same thing or worse to someone else," she said in a 1996 letter to The Virginian-Pilot's Editorial Board.

Coker was sentenced to 20 years and released in 2014. That was a little more than two years before Copeland was killed.

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