Man who shot wife, turned himself in, gets 20 years

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A 62-year-old Manning man who shot his wife five times and then drove himself to the county jail will serve 20 years in prison. Third Circuit Court Judge George C. "Buck" James gave that amount of time to Johnny Lee Richburg Jr. on Monday after Richburg pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter for his role in the death of his wife, 57-year-old Julia McCray Richburg. Richburg was arrested Aug. 9, 2015, after turning himself in at the jail. He confessed, according to the Clarendon County Sheriff’s Office, to shooting his wife during an argument earlier that night at the couple’s Poston Lane home in Manning. Clarendon Public Defender Scott Robinson said in 2015 that forensic evidence - gunshot residue tests - along with crime scene photos showed that his client did not premeditate his wife's death. "There was no one else in this home," Robinson said before Judge R. Ferrell Cothran in 2015 at a bond hearing. "No other witnesses were there. This couple knew each other for 43 years. They had been married for 30 years. He immediately drove himself to the jail. It’s our sincere belief that this is not murder, and the forensic evidence substantiates what he said.” Robinson said his client told law enforcement "he would've killed himself that night had he not run out of bullets." Third Circuit Assistant Solicitor Chris DuRant said in 2015 that Julia Richburg and her husband were at their Poston Lane home in the late evening hours of Aug. 9, 2014, when they began to argue. “The defendant told deputies that he and his wife had been at a party, and that when they got home she confronted him about possibly looking at another woman in an inappropriate manner,” DuRant said. “The defendant said his wife got irate, got a gun and that he took it from her and they fought over it and he shot her.” The victim was found by deputies lying in a pool of blood in her kitchen. “This was a situation that got out of hand,” Robinson said. “He did not intentionally kill her. He didn’t run and hide. He didn’t stage some elaborate scene where it looked like a robbery or something else. He turned himself in.” Lee McCray, the victim's brother, disagreed with that assessment during a bond hearing in 2015. Bond was ultimately denied, and Richburg has remained in jail since his arrest. “Our sister was full of life; she was a beautiful woman,” he said. “He murdered her in cold blood. He betrayed our sister in the ultimate way. This is the same woman who stood by him through thick and thin. Her life was not his to take.”