Criminal Court Judge Don Poole has ruled that the state can introduce at the murder trial of Billy Hawk testimony about his alleged drug involvement with the victim in the case, Johnny Mack Salyer.
Hawk is charged in the 1981 murder of Salyer, whose body was found in a 55-gallon drum in the Tennessee River.
The witnesses indicated that Salyer was cooperating in the drug case against Hawk, giving him a motive to harm him.
Judge Poole said the testimony by former city detective Terry Slaughter and former TBI narcotics agent Lawrence Saylor was "highly probative on the issue of the defendant's motive to kill the victim and the danger of unfair prejudice is low."
The defense had argued that the drug charge had been expunged and that Slaughter was "a dirty cop" who had been sent off to federal prison and could not be believed.
Judge Poole also agreed with the state that the barrel did not have evidentiary value and therefore it did not have a duty to preserve it. He said, "Fingerprints and DNA, analysis of which was in the future, were unlikely to survive submersion."