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Sylva man to serve 89 years for sex crimes with minor

Whittier man charged with sex crimes released due to mistake after guilty plea

By Carey Phillips
A Sylva man received an active sentence of more than 89 years after being found guilty of four counts of statutory sexual offense last week in Jackson County Superior Court.

Judge Marlene Hyatt sentenced Clyde Earnest "C.J." Williamson, 53, of Loriell Drive, Sylva, to four separate sentences of not less than 269 nor more than 332 months. The sentences are to run consecutively making the minimum 89 years, eight months and the maximum 110 years, eight months.

The jury deliberated approximately two hours last Thursday afternoon before convicting Williamson of four statutory sexual offense charges along with four counts of crime against nature and one count of taking indecent liberties with a child. The indecent liberties charge was consolidated for sentencing with one of the statutory sexual offense charges.

Under the Structured Sentencing Act, Williamson could not have received active time on the crime against nature convictions. Since he will be confined to prison, Judge Hyatt elected to arrest judgment on those charges rather than issue a probationary sentence.

Williamson was acquitted on two counts of taking indecent liberties with a child. A defense motion to dismiss a second-degree kidnapping charge was allowed at the conclusion of the state's evidence.

The incidents are alleged to have occurred in June, July and August of 1998 involving a 15-year-old female.

The case of another person charged with sex offenses against minors took a strange twist when it was discovered the defendant had been wrongly sentenced.

Judge Hyatt sentenced Billy Ray Maney, 37, of Dreamcatcher Lane, Whittier, to a total of 12 months active time after he pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual activity by a substitute parent and six counts of taking indecent liberties with a child. As part of a plea agreement entered into on Feb. 21, three counts of statutory rape were dismissed.

However, the next day Judge Hyatt entered an order striking the plea since the court realized the sentencing had been done according to the Structured Sentencing Act. All of the incidents except one allegedly occurred in 1992 and 1993 and were covered by the Fair Sentencing Act. Structure sentencing did not take effect until October 1994.

The latest incident allegedly occurred in May 1999.

"It's just one of those mutual mistakes all-around," District Attorney Charles Hipps said. "We're going to put this thing back on the docket to be tried as soon as possible." With murder trials scheduled for Jackson County Superior Court in April and July, it likely will be August before the Maney case is heard, Hipps said.

The victims in the case expressed displeasure with last week's results. Julia Maney, mother of the two girls involved and soon-to-be ex-wife of Billy Ray Maney, said she fears for her family's safety if her husband is not incarcerated until his next court appearance. The alleged abuse of her daughters started in 1992, when they were ages 11 and 8, she said.

"The reason I didn't know about the abuse was because he told them 'If you tell, I'm going to kill you,'" Julia Maney said.

Since she discovered the abuse and separated from her husband, Maney said she has found her home broken into and her daughters have been harassed. She said she blames Billy Ray Maney for these incidents.

"He did some really sick things in my home, and I know what he's capable of," Julia Maney said. "We're petrified."

When Judge Hyatt set aside Maney's plea and sentence, she also released him under his previous bond conditions. But immediately following the hearing, Maney was taken into custody by the Buncombe County Sheriff's Department on charges of first-degree rape and first-degree sexual offense involving one of the girls that allegedly occurred in Asheville. He was being held there under $200,000 bond Wednesday morning.

In his motion to have the plea stricken, Reid Brown, Maney's attorney, said the state should have known about pending charges in another county involving the same victims. The plea was agreed to based upon reliance that all charges involving the victims had been disclosed, Brown said.

His office had no knowledge of the Buncombe County charges when the plea was agreed to, Hipps said. If he had been aware, those charges likely would have been included in any plea arrangement, he said.

"We're hoping to have his bond revoked (in Jackson County)," Julia Maney said. "(Judge Hyatt) heard him plead guilty and she knows what he did. How could she let him go?"

News Editor Lisa Majors-Duff contributed to this report.

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