Former NBA player testifies at Carruth trial

Tuesday, December 5th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) _ Prosecutors attempting to affirm a former girlfriend's testimony that Rae Carruth confessed to a drive-by shooting brought a former NBA player to the stand.

Charles Shackleford, previously with the Charlotte Hornets, testified Monday in Carruth's murder trial that Candace Smith relayed to him what she said Carruth told her following the November 1999 shooting of Cherica Adams.

Smith testified last week that Carruth, then with the NFL's Carolina Panthers, told her he planned the shooting of Adams, who was pregnant with Carruth's child.

Smith ``said he basically confessed to her at the hospital about what happened,'' Shackleford said in testimony Judge Charles Lamm told jurors to disregard.

Shackleford, a former member of the Charlotte Hornets now living in Myrtle Beach, S.C., also testified that Smith said Carruth told her ``he had something to do with whatever happened to Cherica.''

When she told him this, ``she seemed a little afraid,'' Shackleford said. ``She had tears in her eyes,'' he added, when asked by the prosecutor if Smith were crying.

Shackleford returned to the witness stand Tuesday for cross-examination by defense attorney David Rudolf. Rudolf's early questions concentrated on what Shackleford knew about Smith's relationship with Carruth and when he learned about Adams' shooting.

On Monday, he admitted neither he nor Smith wanted to be involved in the case against Carruth. But after Carruth fled to Tennessee following Adams' death last December, Shackleford said he hired an attorney for both himself and Smith.

Shackleford said he was married at the time he was having an affair with Smith, a previous girlfriend of Carruth's. Shackleford and Smith met at a Charlotte strip club where Smith worked as a dancer.

Lamm said Monday he would consider sanctions against police, who defense attorneys claim kept them in the dark about drug activity by co-defendant Michael Eugene Kennedy.

Kennedy testified earlier he was driving the car from which Adams was shot on Nov. 16, 1999 and that Carruth had hatched the murder plot.

Rudolf told Lamm on Monday that prosecutors had just handed him a copy of a police report showing Kennedy had sold $650 worth of crack cocaine to an undercover police officer in 1996. Rudolf told Lamm he had requested all police information on Kennedy's drug dealing months ago.

Charges were later dismissed in the 1996 case, Rudolf told the judge, possibly because Kennedy was a drug informant.

Homicide investigators deliberately waited until Kennedy finished his testimony before asking vice and narcotics officers about Kennedy's drug activities, Rudolf said.

Prosecutor David Graham told Lamm the state had turned over evidence that included the 1996 arrest. But Rudolf said those records did not provide key details about the arrest.

Lamm said he would hear arguments on the defense motion Friday. He also said he would allow the defense to recall Kennedy for more cross-examination.

Carruth, 26, could be executed if convicted of murdering Adams, 24.

Carruth claims he had nothing to do with the shooting. His lawyers claim admitted triggerman Van Brett Watkins acted on his own when he shot Adams because he was angry at her and Carruth over a foiled drug deal.

Outside the courthouse, Rudolf said the latest twist should make anyone skeptical about what police aren't telling him about the co-defendants.

``I have trouble believing just about anything they say about Michael Kennedy and drugs,'' he said.