Two "very credible" witnesses were adamant about seeing Hill spit on West. The video tape showed West was holding the door open for Hill & her daughter. The Superior Court Judge Geronda V. Carter said before handing down her decision. “Where I’m from, it’s not good to spit on a person. I can only imagine what my response would have been.” The judge’s decision came on the third day of a trial filled with twists and turns. At one point during the reading of the plea, Hill stood up and asked for a mistrial because of a dispute with her attorney. Before being sentenced, West told the court, “I don’t feel I’ve done anything wrong but I feel it’s in my best interest [to take the plea bargain].” Before the plea deal, West spent an hour Friday telling his side of what happened during the explosive encounter at the restaurant. West testified he was leaving the restaurant with his wife when Hill's daughter darted through the door. "It was obvious she wasn't looking. She's being a child," he said. "I said ‘uh oh'. Then I saw the mom getting on her about not paying attention. I opened the door and invited them to come in ... she said, ‘No, you come on through.'" "The last I'd seen of the child was when she had left the vestibule," West said. Then, he said, the mother turned to him "and said, ‘You almost hit my daughter with the door' and I said, ‘No she almost ran into it, but it's OK." Shortly after that, West said, Hill told him, "‘I'm a U.S. military soldier. I'll kill you.' ... I tried to back off. As I started to move away she spits in my face. It happened very quickly." Seconds later West said he countered with a punch and then Hill "came back" at him two more times and he hit her again. After she fell to the floor, West said Hill "started kicking me." West's attorney, Atlanta criminal lawyer Tony Axam, used video from a closed-circuit camera at the Cracker Barrel to try to show his client had no ill will toward Hill or her daughter. He showed the jury about 20 seconds of frame-by-frame video of West holding open the door for Hill and her child. Hill said Sunday that she has fired Kip Jones, the attorney who represented her during West's trial in Clayton County. She has hired one of former Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell’s defense attorneys, Mawuli Mel Davis, to handle any civil suit. Former Atlanta City Councilman Derrick Boazman, who organized the news conference, said he may file complaints Monday to the Georgia Bar Association for what he alleges was the mishandling of West’s prosecution by either Clayton County District Attorney Tracy Graham Lawson or Hill’s attorney, Jones. Hill has previous cases involving violent and verbal altercations and is currently charged with disorderly conduct from an incident this summer, Lawson said. Hill is accused of threatening to shoot two boys, claiming they burglarized her home, Lawson told CNN. The district attorney said she heard a 911 call about the incident just before the trial began.
