From the courtroom to the sidewalk outside, Ethel Heard’s family and friends hollered and wept Wednesday evening after a Leflore County jury found Jonathan McClellan was not responsible for Heard’s shooting death.
“That ain’t right,” yelled Heard’s aunt, Geneva Austin, as she left the courtroom inside the Leflore County Courthouse. “He has killed my niece, and now he’s walking out of here free.”
McClellan, 22, had been charged with murder in the Nov. 25, 2006, shooting death of Heard.
“We’re just happy that the jury reached a verdict,” Greenwood-based defense attorney W.S. “Wallie” Stuckey said while walking out of the courtroom. “And we think it was a just verdict.”
The early morning incident that led to Heard’s death occurred on U.S. 49 between Yazoo City and Belzoni, just south of Silver City.
The Humphreys County case had been moved to Leflore County Circuit Court. Trial began Monday morning. Jurors deliberated for more than six hours Wednesday evening before agreeing to free McClellan.
“This is the strangest verdict I’ve ever seen in 30 years of practicing law,” Humphreys County District Attorney James Powell said while standing outside the courthouse. “This was a case where a blind man could see the evidence, and I guess we just didn’t have a blind man on the jury.”
According to testimony, McClellan and four friends had spent a Friday night bar-hopping in Yazoo City. They left a bar shortly after midnight and, after stopping at Wendy’s restaurant in Yazoo City, headed toward a hunting camp near Belzoni. The group planned to go duck hunting at daybreak.
Ryan Damiens, who was driving the truck, testified Tuesday that an intoxicated McClellan announced at one point, “I bet I can shoot the tail lights out of that car.”
Damiens said McClellan was talking about a car 300 to 400 yards ahead on the highway. Damiens, who said he pleaded for his friend not to try the stunt, testified that McClellan held a .270 caliber hunting rifle out the passenger side window, balanced it on the side mirror, looked through the scope and fired a shot at the car.
McClellan, wearing a blue and stripe polo shirt and khaki pants, testified Wednesday in his defense.
He said he didn’t recall making the bold, deadly statement. He admitted, however, to holding the rifle out of the truck’s window, but for the purpose of emptying the gun’s chamber.
In court Wednesday, Powell asked McClellan, “The gun was outside of the car window, in line with the car in front of you at the time it was discharged, and it was in your possession?”
McClellan responded, “Yes sir.” He claimed the shooting was an accident.
“I don’t think it was the safest thing I could have done,” McClellan said from the witness stand. Later, he apologized for his actions and expressed remorse.
The bullet struck Heard, who was traveling in the car ahead of the men, in the back after ricocheting through the car’s trunk. She had spent an evening in Yazoo City with three friends and was traveling home to Belzoni. No one in either vehicle knew the occupants in the other.
Heard, a 36-year-old mother of two, died after being airlifted to University of Mississippi Medical Center.
The jury’s options were to find McClellan guilty of murder, guilty of manslaughter or innocent. Stuckey and fellow defense attorney Cham Trotter of Belzoni stressed to jurors during closing arguments that, if nothing else, McClellan did not purposefully kill Heard.
“When they gave closing arguments, his own defense attorneys all but asked the jury to find him guilty of manslaughter,” Powell said.
Powell said that before the case went to trial, he had talked with Heard’s family about offering McClellan a manslaughter plea. The family, wanting a murder conviction, declined.
“Had they have agreed to the plea, (McClellan) would be doing 20 years right now,” Powell said. “I’m never surprised at anything that happens in the Delta.”
Humphreys County Circuit Judge Jannie Lewis read the verdict to the court shortly before 8 p.m. Wednesday. As she did, Heard’s family and friends shook their heads while members of McClellan’s family cried.
“We hope this is closure of a tragic situation,” Trotter said. “We hope that both of the families can move on from this.”
McClellan is white, and Heard was black. Throughout the three-day trial, the crowd in the courtroom was split by race. With tensions high, extra Leflore County deputies were called to the courthouse before the verdict was read.
While leaving the courtroom, Austin hollered of injustice.
“What about these two children?” she said while motioning to two young girls standing beside her. “What about them? What about us? How is it that he can shoot my niece and walk home free? I’ll never trust the police again.”
The jury was composed of eight African-Americans and four whites.
McClellan, a former Holmes Community College student from Lexington, will enter the University of Southern Mississippi in the fall.
