Jecody Spann claimed he was pistol-whipped, beaten and bloodied when he intervened to defend his ex-girlfriend as her new lover berated her during an argument inside a Mid City North apartment. Spann's intervention triggered a scuffle between the two men that ended with 25-year-old Brandon Williams being shot dead.
Spann, 29, stood trial last week for second-degree murder in the Dec. 8, 2021, slaying at an apartment complex in the 2100 block of Lobdell Boulevard. After two days of testimony, a jury rejected Spann's self-defense arguments, finding him guilty of manslaughter, a lower charge.
The Baker man faces up to 40 years in prison when he stands before District Judge Eboni Johnson Rose to be sentenced on May 7.
A jury of nine women and three men deliberated nearly three hours before rendering the guilty verdict Thursday night, according to court records.
Prosecutors said Williams was unarmed when Spann shot him in the head. They told jurors Spann escalated the situation when he stepped into an altercation Williams was having with Kristen Hoffmann.
Williams died at the scene, which Spann fled before officers arrived.
"Tell the police somebody else did it," he told Hoffman as he walked out of the apartment, according to Assistant District Attorney Cheryl Carter's closing arguments.
Williams was dating Hoffman at the time. The woman had dated Spann in the past and they still communicated. She returned home the morning of the shooting after working an overnight shift and gave Spann permission to sleep on her couch.
Hoffman's decision to let Spann stay angered Williams and prompted an argument between the couple. Prosecutors said he wanted Hoffman to tell Spann to leave.
At some point, Spann got involved in the argument. His attorney, Victor Woods, sought to prove Williams was the aggressor and Spann felt his life was in danger.
Woods said Spann was trying to protect Hoffmann and told an incensed Williams "You can't treat her that way."
He indicated Williams reacted by pouncing on Spann and beating him in the face with a pistol. Williams was shot as the two men wrestled over the weapon, he told the jury.
"The person who faced the threat that day was Jecody Spann," Woods said during his closing arguments. "He did what he thought he had to do to protect himself."
"Jecody reasonably believed that he was protecting himself from a forceful of things being committed against him," Woods said.
But Assistant District Attorney Fredrick Scott, who helped Carter argue the state's case, said Spann's busted lip and bloody nose were not the injuries of someone struck in the face with a gun.
"Let's be clear," he told the jury. "The defendant brought a gun to a fistfight. That's what he did. And someone was murdered."
Officers found a live round between Williams' feet, which a ballistics analyst testified was likely ejected when a gunman racked the weapon to fire it, not knowing the gun's chamber was already loaded.
Carter, the lead prosecutor, admitted Hoffman gave police a different story at the scene the day of the killing. She told them Spann wasn't at the residence when the shots were fired. But on the stand during the first day of testimony on March 6, Hoffman said she lied to officers because she was in shock after seeing Williams' dead body. She testified that she retreated into the bathroom when the two men began fighting and she heard the sounds of them tussling through the door. Hoffman said she didn't come out until after she heard a gunshot, and found Williams lying dead on the floor with a gunshot to the head.
Carter acknowledged the inconsistencies in Hoffman's stories but told jurors to listen to her hysterical 911 call when evaluating her credibility. "A witness is like a family member; you can't pick them," Carter said.
She tried to convince the panel that it was premeditated murder instead of a crime of passion because Spann was not involved in the initial argument between Williams and Hoffman. She stressed the argument that it was not a justifiable homicide.
"If you inject yourself into something that's not yours, how can you then claim self-defense?" Carter said. "You can't."