PULASKI — After sentencing a Pulaski County man who represented himself at trial to spend 52 years in prison, a judge this afternoon begged him one more time to accept the help of an attorney.

“Will you please let the court appoint counsel to assist you in the appeal?” Circuit Court Judge Colin Gibb asked 55-year-old Ronald Layne Meredith.

Meredith talked for a minute with Adam DeVries, the attorney who had been on hand as his “standby counsel,” before agreeing to the judge’s request.

Meredith represented himself during a four-day trial in November in Pulaski County Circuit Court, and jurors found him guilty of nine charges — six felonies, including solicitation to commit murder and attempted escape, and three misdemeanors — related to three incidents in 2003 and 2004.

During the trial, Gibb repeatedly asked Meredith to reconsider his decision to represent himself. Meredith refused.

At least twice during the trial, Meredith’s outbursts caused jurors to gasp, Pulaski County Commonwealth’s Attorney Mike Fleenor said. Once he referred to Fleenor as a “horned, winged one.” At another point he accused his wife, who was testifiying, of having sex with Fleenor and Gibb.

The case got started in January 2004, when a man called 911 to report that Meredith was at the Fairlawn Wal-Mart and was planning to kill a man who owed him money for drugs.

Police searched his home and found, among other items, a homemade gun silencer fashioned from a two-liter Pepsi bottle stuffed with rags.

Meredith was arrested, denied bond and held at the New River Valley Regional Jail in Dublin. He and his wife, Kathleen Charlotte Meredith, tried to hire a man to help him break loose.

Police caught wind of their plan, though, and sent in an undercover federal agent. In April 2004, Kathleen Meredith met the agent at the Pulaski McDonald’s. She agreed to pay him $1,500 to intercept the jail van that would take her husband to court for a hearing.

The day of the hearing, Meredith was never taken to court. Instead, his wife was arrested.

At a hearing in November 2004, she pleaded guilty to conspiracy to escape, conspiracy to commit unlawful wounding and concealing a handgun. She received a suspended sentence for those convictions but served jail time on drug charges.

While Kathleen Meredith’s case went to court quickly, Ronald Meredith’s dragged on.

He was found incompetent to stand trial and committed to Central State Hospital, a state mental facility in Petersburg.

In December 2006, Fleenor said, Meredith was found competent and his case finally began moving forward. But a couple of weeks before his November trial was scheduled to begin, Meredith told the judge that DeVries, the third appointed to represent him, couldn’t help him and he wanted to represent himself.

After four days of testimony and often contentious exchanges between Meredith and witnesses, the jury found him guilty of all but one of the charges he faced. They aquitted him on a misdemeanor charge of petit larceny.

The jury took only an hour to recommend a prison sentence: 30 years on the conviction for soliciting to commit murder, five years for the attempted escape, five years for each of two convictions for possessing a firearm as a convicted felon, two years for conspiring to escape, two years for possessing a silencer and one year each for brandishing a firearm and two counts of destruction of property related to damage to two vehicles.

At this afternoon's sentencing hearing, Gibb upheld that recommendation. Meredith continued to insist that he should represent himself.

A sheriff’s deputy pushed his wheelchair to a table and Meredith, wearing a black-and-white jumpsuit, long hair and glasses, mumbled about his hands being cuffed together as he flipped through the paperwork in his case.

Meredith uses a wheelchair because one of his legs is amputated above the knee.

The only testimony Thursday came from Scott Bush, the probation officer who prepared Meredith’s pre-sentencing report. Meredith had asked for the report, causing its preparation to become a court order. But then, Bush said, he refused to cooperate.

Meredith asked Bush, whom he repeatedly called “Mr. Scott,” why the report didn’t mention that he was an honorably discharged veteran or that he was involved in civic duties in Radford.

“Because you didn’t tell me those things,” Bush responded.

Gibb told Meredith that he would have been the best source of positive information about himself.

“If you don’t tell him, you know, he’s not a mind-reader,” Gibb said.

“I’m innocent of all these charges, your honor, and I’m astounded that I was convicted. I’m speechless,” Meredith said.

He said he will appeal the convictions “and have my innocence proven.”