Former AF Pilot Faces Life in Prison

Four hundred Gulf County residents have been summoned to appear in court next week in an effort to find at least six who can sit on Air Force Capt. John C. Perrys' jury.

Perrys, 32, is charged with burglary of a dwelling while armed, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and misdemeanor criminal mischief. He faces up to life in prison if convicted as charged.

The lawyers have set aside three days to question jurors before beginning a scheduled two-week trial.

Perrys is accused of forcing his way into Gulf County Judge Fred Witten's home the morning of April 12, 2005, and attacking Witten's stepdaughter, Caroline Lister, with a metal baton. Lister is Perrys' former girlfriend.

She said she was stepping from the shower that morning when the bathroom door burst in and a masked man began beating her with a club. Lister, a former Panama City assistant public defender, said she was able to slip past her attacker and run from the house.

At the time, Perrys was stationed at an air base in Louisiana, where he was assigned to fly bombers. He was arrested at Tyndall Air Force Base a short time after the attack.

Although felonies are among Perrys' charges, it was the misdemeanor that got most of the attention Wednesday in the last hearing before next week's trial.

Perrys' attorney, Nelson Rodriguez-Varela of Coral Gables, asked Crestview senior Circuit Judge Keith Brace to sever the misdemeanor from the charges going to trial and suppress evidence of the misdemeanor collected in a search of Perrys' car.

"They're two separate cases and two separate crimes," Varela said.

Perrys is charged with criminal mischief for allegedly cutting the brake lines of Lister's vehicle on the day she was attacked.

Prosecutor Bill Lewis argued the criminal mischief could have been charged as an attempted murder and that he believes it is connected to the attack on Lister.

He said the tool that cut the lines was in Perrys' car. Lewis said comparison tests done by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement showed the tool found in Perrys' car was used "to the exclusion of all other tools in the world."

Lewis said the damage to the car is linked by time and location to the attack on Lister.

"When you look at the nature of this criminal mischief, this was clearly an effort to do harm to Miss Lister," Lewis said.