Jury deliberations will continue Tuesday in Hale murder case
Jurors on Monday began deliberating the fate of Robert Sydrious Thornton, on trial for the 2015 shooting death of 17-year-old Gadsden City High School student Anthony Hale Jr. before breaking for the evening. They will continue deliberations Tuesday.
Thornton is accused of firing shots into a crowd of people leaving a birthday party at a nightclub on Broad Street in downtown Gadsden. Four people were shot and Hale succumbed days later to a gunshot wound to the head.
From the time of the shooting through the trial, Hale has been described as an innocent bystander to the events that night, not involved in the arguments that apparently led to the shooting.
"That woman's grandson is in the cold ground," Chief Deputy District Attorney Marcus Reid told jurors, "because of the choices that man made," indicating Thornton. Those choices, he said, including bringing a gun to a teen's birthday party, and after an argument — "just words" — at the party, going outside to get a gun, then firing into the crowd.
Defense attorneys Jacob Millican and John Floyd pointed out differences in the testimony of the state witnesses, saying three witnesses put Thornton at three different locations in the area near the intersection of Seventh and Broad streets.
They said the jury should consider evidence presented and evidence that was not — that of the large crowd of people present when shots were fired, only four were called to testify and they gave "inconsistent" accounts of the events, the lawyers argued.
In recalling a stressful event, Reid said, differences in witnesses' accounts are common. If the witnesses gave identical accounts, he said, the defense would argue prosecutors told them what to say.
In arguments to the jury, defense attorneys said the state claimed there was one gun and one shooter, even though there were two kinds of shell casings — 9mm and .22 caliber — at the scene.
Reid told jurors that wasn't the case, that he'd said from opening arguments that there were two guns fired at the scene. He told jurors to recall testimony from state Department of Forensic Science firearms expert Nicholas Drake, who said the damaged projectile the medical examiner removed from Anthony Hale's head was too large to have been fired through a .22-caliber weapon.
He was not able to determine the caliber, he said: it could have been fired through various caliber weapons larger than a .22.
Reid said testimony in the case indicated only Thornton fired a 9mm gun.
Jurors are considering charges of intentional murder and reckless murder, and were instructed that the defendant could only be found guilty of one of the charges. Thornton initially was indicted for intentional murder, then prosecutors took the case back to another grand jury, resulting in the charge of reckless murder.
Reid said act of shooting into the crowd was "so reprehensible" that they believed jurors should have the option of considering it "especially in these days and times when we are all at risk from people who have no regard for life."
Another Anniston man, Montarious Hill, 20, of Anniston, also was indicted in Hale's murder. He was fatally shot, Huntsville police said, when he and four other men were involved in an attempted robbery there in December 2016. Police said at that time that five men, all from Anniston, went to a Huntsville home with the intent to steal drugs.
Two men forced their way inside and were shot. Hill died from multiple gunshots; the other man was shot in the leg.
Contact Gadsden Times reporter Donna Thornton at 256-393-3284 or donna.thornton@gadsdentimes.com.
This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: Jurors deliberating evidence in 2015 murder of Anthony Hale Jr.
