Murder conviction in Gaston County man's death vacated
A Lincoln County man convicted of fatally shooting his landlord's son with a sawed-off shotgun in 2017 will receive a new trial because the judge did not instruct jurors on the possibility he could have been defending himself, according to a ruling last week from the North Carolina Court of Appeals.
Ronald Wayne Vaughn, 32, was convicted of first-degree murder and possession of a weapon of mass destruction in the death of 27-year-old Gary Lee Somerset, the Gaston County man whom Vaughn is accused of shooting Aug. 25, 2017. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
On Tuesday, the state Court of Appeals announced that Vaughn's first-degree murder conviction was vacated because the presiding judge failed to instruct jurors about a possible self-defense argument. His conviction on a charge of possession of a weapon of mass destruction still stands.
According to the opinion, Vaughn had been renting a trailer in Lincoln County from Somerset's mother, Kimberly Ingram, and Somerset had been temporarily staying with him, according to the opinion.
On the day of the killing, Vaughn, Ingram and Somerset had gotten into an argument when Ingram told Vaughn that he couldn't live there anymore.
She wrote him a notice to vacate the trailer, and he ripped it up in front of her, the record states.
When the mother and son refused to leave, Vaughn called 911 and then retrieved a shotgun with a sawed-off barrel, the record states.
As the argument over who owned the mobile home continued, Somerset reportedly ran at Vaughn yelling "Let's end this!"
Somerset was shot when he was approximately 5 feet from Vaughn, the record states.
Vaughn was convicted in the shooting after a Lincoln County jury trial, but he appealed his conviction, arguing in part that the judge should have instructed jurors on the state's "stand your ground" provision, which allows people to use deadly force in self-defense. Not only did the judge not instruct jurors on that possibility, but a prosecutor argued that the state's "stand your ground" provision did not apply in Vaughn's case because Vaughn's possession of the sawed-off shotgun was a felony, the appeal notes.
Vaughn "met his burden of showing a reasonable possibility that, had the error in question not been committed, a different result would have been reached at trial," the opinion stated.
This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: Murder conviction in Gaston County man's death vacated
