L.J. MCADAMS of the Freestone County Sheriff’s office guards the door to the Fairfield civic center where potential jurors met Monday morning to begin jury selection for the upcoming Doster murder trial. One of two men charged with capital murder in the 2005 death of a Freestone county rancher saved himself from the death penalty last week when he pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery.

The plea by James Harnage, 34, was entered in an 87th District Court hearing in Anderson county before Judge Deborah Evans.

In a plea bargain agreement, Harnage agreed to the lesser charge in exchange for testifying against co-defendant Oscar Ray Doster who goes on trial in the 87th court in Freestone county this month.

If Harnage’s testimony matches statements he has given to law enforcement officers, he will be assessed a 40-year prison sentence on the aggravated robbery charge.

Doster and Harnage were escapees from the Covington county jail in Andalusia, Ala., on April 7, 2005, when Freestone county ranch owner Dennis Courtney was murdered.

Courtney’s body was found bound, beaten and shot between two outbuildings on the ranch, and a pickup truck and 4-wheeler were reported stolen.

The two Alabama men were arrested about two weeks later—-Harnage was located in Las Vegas, Nev., allegedly in possession of Courtney’s pickup truck and Doster was located in California after wrecking a 4-wheeler allegedly stolen at the Freestone county ranch.

Since their arrests, Doster has been convicted of capital murder in Alabama and assessed the death penalty in connection with a murder he committed during a prior jail break.

Harnage, who originally was serving a 3-year term in Alabama, was sentenced to 20 years after the jail escape. He is to serve the Alabama and Texas sentences concurrently.

The 34-year-old is being held in the Anderson county jail and was escorted into the courtroom last week in handcuffs and shackles to enter his plea.

Judge Evans accepted the guilty plea, but will delay formally assessing sentence until after the Doster trial.

The judge admonished Harnage that his testimony in the Doster trial must materially match a statement he gave to Texas Ranger Jim Huggins, or she would assess a lengthier prison term.

The defendant’s 72-page statement made to the ranger, with diagrams, and a letter to Huggins were entered into evidence at the hearing last week.

“I was not involved,” Harnage says of the murder. “I was a witness. I was involved in a robbery.”

The 34-year-old, at the judge’s request, gave a brief account of what transpired at the Freestone county ranch.

Harnage claims he was unhooking a trailer from a Ford dually pickup truck, and that Doster was in a barn, when he spied a black pickup enter the property and park at the barn.

He says that he hid in the truck and that a short time later Doster exited the barn dragging a man, later identified as Courtney.

Doster, the 34-year-old says, placed the man between two outbuildings, returned to the barn and exited again with a hammer.

Harnage recalls that he fueled the truck with diesel from a tank at the scene and before the two left Doster took two rifles to the spot where the man had been drugged and fired three shots.

Jury selection for the Doster capital murder trial started this week—-potential jurors reported to the Fairfield Civic Center on Monday where they were issued questionnaires.

The civic center was pressed into service because the district courtroom in the courthouse is not large enough to seat the number of jurors called. A call for 350 jurors was sent out from the district clerk’s office, but the list has already been trimmed to 227 through exemptions undeliverable summons.

Starting Thursday, six potential jurors will be called for selection each day for a week, then eight will be called daily until a 12-member panel and two alternates is seated.

To date, Freestone county has spent $132,564 on the trial, and the costs are just getting started.

District Clerk Janet Chappell reports that four hotel rooms have been reserved for attorneys, and that the county must fly in witnesses and lodge them.

The county has budgeted $250,000 for trial costs.