Posted on 01/23/2011 4:28:49 AM PST by marktwain
WEST POINT -- After a four-day trial, a Clay County jury returned a not-guilty verdict Friday in the manslaughter trial of Jeremy Barnhill.
When the verdict was read, the family of Jeremy Barnhill leapt to their feet, cheering. "Thank God, thank God," his mother, Mary Barnhill, kept repeating.
Although they were chastised by 16th Circuit Judge Jim Kitchens, the family had waited more than a year to see Barnhill cleared of the charge.
The jury found that Barnhill, 26, of West Point, shot and killed 46-year-old Curtis Clardy in self-defense on Jack Williams Road in the Cedar Bluff community on Jan. 2, 2010.
As District Attorney Forrest Allgood comforted Clardy's grieving family in a back room, Barnhill expressed his relief.
"This has been the hardest time I've ever been through in my life," said Barnhill, a self-employed construction worker.
His sister, recent Mississippi State University graduate Christy Roush, said she was glad the community now knows what her family knew all along.
"I'm just glad the truth prevailed and came out in court," she said.
As Clardy's family solemnly left the courthouse Friday evening, some were still softly sobbing. His mother, Oneta Childers, said she was angry and frustrated by the trial's outcome.
"I don't see how this could have possibly happened," she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at cdispatch.com ...
This happened in my neck of the woods. I am from a small town in Chickasaw County which borders Clay County. I think I have West Point’s county right.
I am glad I was not on the jury. Sounds like a very confused case.
I'm glad I'm not in either of those families. They put the dys in dysfunctional. I really glad I'm not one of the kids in the custody battle.
Sounds like the jury made the right decision, there were too many lies being told by the sister to really know what exactly was going on but it sounds like it was an attempted set up by the sister to get her husband in trouble so that she would get the kids. Unfortunately for her the husband was smart enough not to go there but to have her brother go and get her. Also sounds like the boyfriend and his buddy were all liquored up (on moonshine?) and spoiling for a fight no matter who came to get the woman. She of coarse is spinning lie after lie in order to get herself out of any trouble with any body but we already know what type of character she has.
I am STILL confused. But perhaps no more than the participants.
As Johny Cash would say”There ain’t no good in an evil hearted woman, and I ain’t cut out to be no Jesse James, and you don’t go writing hot checks down in Mississippi and there aint no good chain gang”.
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