Birthday-party killing with jury

Jacksonville fray led to shots

A Pulaski County jury called on to decide whether the August 2013 slaying of a Jacksonville man was an act of murder or self-defense will resume deliberations this morning after spending four hours Thursday considering the case without reaching a verdict.

Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen ordered the eight women and four men of the jury to return to court at 9 a.m. today to see if they can conclude the case.

Charged with first-degree murder and first-degree battery, Stanley Isaac Nelson has admitted to shooting brothers Sedrick Lemont Green, 34, and Latravis Jerome Morant, 31, at the Jacksonville home of another Morant relative last year.

Nelson contends that he only fired the gun to save himself and his cousin, 34-year-old Courtney Ryan Marshall, who was losing a fight to Green. Jurors, if they don't acquit Nelson or convict him as charged, could also find him guilty of the lesser charges of second-degree murder or manslaughter.

The men had gathered to celebrate Green's birthday and had been drinking and shooting dice until a dispute broke out between Green and Marshall. Nelson fired five shots and Green was wounded in the arm and leg while Morant was fatally shot in the stomach.

Defense attorney David Cannon told jurors in his closing argument that Nelson was faced with at least three Morant men, all of them bigger and stronger than himself, one of whom had pinned Marshall to the floor and was beating him.

"The big question, ladies and gentlemen, is why did my client shoot?" Cannon said. "He shot in defense of Courtney Marshall and himself."

Cannon said there's evidence that Nelson had tried to be a peacemaker when he took Marshall's gun to stop his cousin from firing the weapon.

"You know what shows intent? My client took the gun away from Courtney so there wouldn't be a shooting," he said. "He waited [to shoot] until Courtney was in serious trouble with someone bigger and stronger hitting him in the head."

But deputy prosecutor John Hout told jurors that Marshall, who is to be tried on the murder and battery charges next month, was the aggressor, provoking Green into a fistfight by poking the man in the head.

Marshall was drunk and kept fighting even while the other Morant family members tried to stop him, Hout told jurors. If Nelson wanted to end things peacefully, he could have corralled his cousin and left, the prosecutor said.

"A reasonable and prudent person, as soon as his buddy got drunk and out of control, would've thought about other people and gotten [Marshall] out of there," Hout said. "If he'd done that, Latravis Morant would still be alive."

Instead, when Marshall called on Nelson to shoot the men, Nelson obeyed, firing to kill, Hout told jurors.

"He does what he's told," Hout said. "He was told to kill everybody."

Nelson, who is on parole, did not testify. The sole witness for the defense was Quante Blakely, Nelson's former girlfriend. She told jurors Thursday that she and the other women in the house had been in another room when the fight broke out. Blakely told jurors that Latravis Morant had been living with her at the time and called him her best friend. She said she has three children with Green, Morant's brother.

She testified that Nelson tried to break up the fight and, when Marshall pulled his gun, Nelson took it away from him. She said Nelson never became aggressive even though he had to dodge a punch by Latravis Morant just before the shooting started.

Prosecutors accused her of trying to mislead police because she didn't originally tell investigators she saw Nelson with the gun and initially claimed to have been hiding behind a couch when the shooting started.

Since Nelson did not testify, prosecutors were not allowed to ask him about how he maimed a Conway woman in a shooting 14 years ago outside a downtown Little Rock nightclub when he was 20. Police believe Nelson opened fire in that case because he was angry that he'd been thrown out of a nightclub, court files show.

According to court records, Nelson had been drinking at the bar at 119 S. Main St. three days before Christmas 2000 when bouncers discovered he was underage. Nelson was thrown out of the club, which has since closed, despite trying to resist the efforts to eject him.

Witnesses in the crowd of about 100 people outside the club told police that either Nelson or an unidentified man with him threatened to return to the club with a gun and "spray" the place while acting like he had a gun.

Nelson and the man left, but 10 minutes later, a white sport utility vehicle drove by the club with someone shooting from the passenger side, wounding the woman, Sabrina Manley, in the right arm. She suffered a 22-inch wound and required emergency surgery with a vein graft to repair her arm, which was severely weakened as a result, according to court files.

The bouncers identified Nelson as the man making the threats, and police were contacted by several anonymous tipsters who said Nelson was the gunman, but no one would come forward at first because they were afraid of Nelson, according to court files.

Questioned by police about a month after the shooting, Nelson admitted that he had been thrown out of the club but denied shooting or threatening anyone.

Charged with first-degree unlawful discharge of a firearm from a vehicle, Nelson was convicted at trial in January 2002 and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Metro on 10/24/2014

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