Brian Smith
A jury of six men and six women was scheduled to begin deliberating at 9 a.m. today in the murder trial of David Daugherty after attorneys agreed Tuesday to continue the trial an additional day.
Jury instructions and closing arguments ended a lengthy day in Madison Circuit Court as prosecutors concluded their case and Daugherty’s lawyer mounted a defense.
Commonwealth’s Attorney David Smith rested the prosecution’s case shortly after 10 a.m. Tuesday following the conclusion of the testimony of Steve King, the detective who investigated the case for the Madison County Sheriff’s Office.
Smith played recordings of two additional interviews King conducted with Daugherty, 42, on Dec. 23, 2008, the day Christopher Shane Adkins was shot and killed around 4:30 a.m. outside a home on Battlefield Memorial Highway.
Daugherty’s attorney, public defender Meena Mohanty, asked King on cross-examination if her client had said during the interviews that he believed Adkins was armed with a gun, and King confirmed that Daugherty had made that statement.
Mohanty opened her defense case by calling Daugherty’s mother to the stand to testify briefly about his demeanor the morning of Dec. 23 before calling Ed Witt, a former co-worker of Daugherty’s, to testify about a deal between Witt’s father, Ricky Witt, and Daugherty to purchase the shotgun used in the killing.
The next defense witness was Adam Anglin, the passenger in Daugherty’s truck who accompanied Daugherty to the Berea home where Adkins was killed.
Mohanty asked Anglin to recount the events leading up to the shooting, and Anglin testified that he heard Adkins yell “I’m going to knock your f----in’ brains out” before Adkins struck the passenger window of the truck with an aluminum bat.
Under cross-examination, Anglin admitted to assistant commonwealth’s attorney Jennifer Hall Smith that he was under the influence of methamphetamine on the night of the shooting and that the drug had impaired his ability to remember the events of the killing during a Dec. 26, 2008, interview with King.
Jennifer Smith hammered Anglin for several minutes on inconsistencies between his testimony Tuesday and his statements to King following the shooting, including the sequence of events that led to Daugherty and Anglin following a vehicle carrying Adkins and two women, Kay Horn and Deidre Isaacs, to Horn’s mother’s home in Berea.
Anglin also attempted to explain inconsistent statements about whether he could hear Adkins making threats before the window on Daugherty’s truck was broken, and Smith repeatedly referred to transcripts of Anglin’s statements to King in which Anglin claimed he could not hear Adkins.
After a lunch recess, Daugherty took the stand in his own defense and claimed that he had purchased the shotgun from Ricky Witt at his home earlier in the evening, then returned to Witt’s home around 3 a.m. to discuss purchasing a car stereo.
Daugherty testified that he had followed Horn, Isaacs and Adkins to Berea because Anglin was attracted to Isaacs and wanted to speak to her, and also repeated his claim that he wanted to give $40 to Horn. Daugherty also claimed he and Anglin were driving to Berea to purchase cigarettes after leaving Witt’s home.
Jennifer Smith questioned Daugherty about why he had not mentioned the cigarette purchase in any prior interview, and also had never mentioned Anglin’s desire to speak with Isaacs.
Smith’s questioning became heated, with Daugherty often seeming to argue with Smith as she asked questions about the events at the Berea home.
The most heated exchange came after Smith used a tape measure to demonstrate the distance police believe Adkins was shot from and questioned Daugherty about where he and Adkins were standing when the shot was fired.
“You can say whatever you want, but I know where he was,” Daugherty told Smith.
After Mohanty rested her case around 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, prosecutors called King back to the stand briefly to rebut Anglin’s testimony.
King testified that Anglin told him in an interview that Anglin taunted Adkins at the Berea home and that Daugherty said Horn and Isaacs had lied when asked about Adkins’ whereabouts earlier in the evening.
In her closing argument, Mohanty asked the jury to find her client not guilty because he acted in self-defense.
“There is not one action that points to David Daugherty wanting to hunt down and kill Shane Adkins,” Mohanty said. “Every piece of evidence at Kay’s house points to David acting in self-defense.”
Jennifer Smith used her closing argument to walk the jury through a theory of the case that attempts to reconcile the differing statements many of the witnesses have given about the events leading up to the incident.
“We don’t really know what’s going on between all these people and Ricky Witt, because they’re not telling,” Smith said. “The defendant, for whatever reason, and we’ll never know, was hunting Shane Adkins.”
Smith asked the jury to find Daugherty guilty of murder. Jurors were given instructions that also permit guilty verdicts on the lesser charges of first- or second-degree manslaughter or reckless homicide.
Brian Smith may be reached at bsmith@richmondregister.com or at 624-6694.
