Parkway shooter walks free by Jan. 4

A man convicted in a heart-rending trial 10 years ago will walk free within 19 days after serving less than 12 years of a 20-year sentence.
A nine-woman, three-man jury convicted Timothy R. Doyle of Paducah of first-degree manslaughter but mentally ill March 23, 1999 after deliberating 12 hours and 27 minutes.
Doyle had been charged with capital murder in the shooting death of Brandon Thacker, 27, of Louisville as the two men drove their cars along the Western Kentucky Parkway in Lyon County on April 16, 1998.
Commonwealth Attorney G.L. Ovey had sought a murder conviction.
“Some cases — there is never a day goes by that I don’t think about them,” Ovey said on Monday. “This is one of them.”
Even so, Ovey said he respected the jury though he doesn’t agree with the verdict.
Doyle has served most of his time at Kentucky State Reformatory in LaGrange with less than a year between October 2006 and July 2007 at Western Kentucky Correctional Complex.
“I’d be interested in what treatment he received while incarcerated,” Ovey said.
He’ll likely never know.
Lisa Lamb, spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections in Frankfort, said she was prohibited by a federal law from revealing any information about treatment Doyle received or didn’t receive or any medication he might have been prescribed.
Lamb said Doyle’s privacy is protected by HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 Privacy Rule).
Ovey said he attended a parole board hearing for Doyle in April of 2008. At the hearing, he learned Doyle had received seven years credit for educational courses he had taken, “which shocked me.”
“It’s just appalling to me that a violent offender who received a 20-year sentence is now going home at the end of this month,” Ovey said. “He took another man’s life, and served less than 12 years. ... No one is ever going to convince me that he’s paid his debt to society. It was ridiculous that he was given so much credit.”
Lamb said Doyle — who has family in Lyon County, and whose parents sat through the seven day trial — was committed to corrections April 26, 1999 and began serving his sentence.
“He is entitled to receive good time by statute of one fourth (five years) of his sentence, as a result of the date he committed the crime,” Lamb said, noting the KRS 439.3401 known as the violent offender’s act did not become effective until July 15, 1998. That law precludes “violent offenders from receiving good time.” The violent offenders act mandates that an inmate serve 85 percent of his/her sentence before being eligible to see the parole board.
Doyle will have served out his time — 11 years and eight months because the law under which he was convicted mandated that a violent offender serve only 50 percent or 12 years of the sentence.
Lamb said Doyle received credit for 383 days of jail time he served before being convicted. “He received educational good time, also meritorious good time — that’s clean time and is given by the warden,” she said, adding that he also received 719 good days.
Lamb said Doyle has seven days of “meritorious time” that is still under review meaning he could be released as early as Dec. 28 or it could be Jan. 4 before he is free.
Doyle, now 52, admitted he shot Thacker, an Alcoholic Beverage Control agent, who was driving the last car of a four-car caravan of ABC agents on their way from Paducah to an assignment in Henderson. But his defense attorneys persuaded the jury he was delusional thinking Thacker was involved in a prostitution ring and was about to kidnap fellow ABC agent Jennifer Shearer, who was driving ahead of him.
Mark Stanziano, lead defense attorney, said Doyle was a paranoid schizophrenic who “suffers from delusions on a grand scale.”
Jurors had several verdict options — not guilty, not guilty by reason of insanity, guilty of murder, guilty of first-or second-degree manslaughter, guilty but mentally ill, or guilty of reckless homicide.
In his closing statement at the trial, Stanziano described Doyle and Thacker as mirror images.
“Timothy Doyle wanted to be a hero. Brandon Thacker was one,” Stanziano said, referring to a citation Thacker received for saving a woman and child from the seventh floor of a burning building. Upon leaving the courthouse the day of the shooting, a grinning Doyle, told reporters, “I’m a hero.”
In his closing statement at the trial, Ovey told the jury that when someone “transgresses the law, someone suffers.” Someone’s fate is decided in “the snap of a finger or the twinkling of an eye,” he said. “In this case it was deadly.”
The defense claimed that Thacker had become frustrated by Doyle’s erratic driving and brandished his gun, prompting Doyle to believe he had to protect himself. But Ovey questioned whether Doyle could have fired three rounds into Thacker’s car without Thacker returning fire if the ABC agent had his gun out.