Georgia, Motorcycle shooting going to trial

[RACER X]

Monday/Tuesday was Jury selection etc..
Case appears to have started today...

http://onlineathens.com/stories/1117...56949263.shtml

http://onlineathens.com/stories/1118...57122353.shtml

http://onlineathens.com/stories/1119...57526917.shtml

[Particle Man]

He had no choice but to shoot Mough as the motorcycle bore down on him, according to Tolley.

how? was the motorcycle going backward? If not, how did he shoot him in the back? That tells me he wasn't in danger of being run down at that moment... something stinks...

[LeeNetworX]

Been watching it unfold on the local news. I just want to punch the TV every time the officer's face is shown. Of course, the guy on the bike was being an idiot to begin with.

[Papa_Complex]

Nice spin. What are they trying to do, even out the "poisoning" of the jury pool?

[t-homo]

#1. The guy was riding like and idiot.
#1.5. The daughter is a cunt.
#2. How did he ram the car?????
#3. Shot in the back as the motorcycle came at him "like a missle."
#4. "But Gear scarcely recalls what happened - he doesn’t even remember pulling the trigger when he shot at Mough - because of a severe medical condition, Tolley said." Why exactly does this man own a gun in the first place?

[RACER X]

http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/...62331753.shtml

"Jury convicts Gear of murder"

"WATKINSVILLE - An Oconee County Superior Court jury convicted a Bogart man of murder and aggravated assault on Monday for shooting a motorcyclist in the back and killing him last winter.

Richard Harold “Ricky” Gear, was sentenced to life plus five years for malice murder, felony murder and aggravated assault in the Feb. 25 death of Bryan Joseph “B.J.” Mough of Winder.

Attorneys made closing arguments Monday morning in the two-week trial.

District Attorney Ken Mauldin argued that Gear acted with premeditation.

Though Gear’s daughters called their mother to say a man was following them on Atlanta Highway and collided with their car, Gear had time to dial 911 or make sure his relatives were safely in the house, Mauldin said. He also didn’t know that the man his daughters called about was driving a motorcycle, Mauldin said.

“(Gear) didn’t know that a motorcycle had anything to do with his daughters,” he said. “He didn’t know if (Mough) was someone who happened to turn down the wrong place at the wrong time.

“His first instinct was to shoot” before getting more information from his daughters Chelsea and Samantha Gear, Mauldin argued.

Gear fired his gun twice as Mough drove by, and a third time when the biker made a second pass from the other direction.

“This case was about a man who shot first, who shot last and shot in between, and didn’t ask questions before and didn’t ask questions later,” the prosecutor said.

Defense attorney Edward Tolley argued that Mough was the aggressor, and the motorcyclist could have continued straight on Atlanta Highway toward home, instead of following Gear’s daughters into Bogart.

Even after Gear fired two warning shots at the passing biker, Tolley argued, Mough turned around and drove straight at Gear, who jumped backward and fired a third time, killing Mough.

“The only reason we are here is because this man did not want to back down,” Tolley told jurors. “We are here because Bryan Mough did not know how to back down.”

Prosecution witnesses testified that bikers wearing a full helmet and face mask might not hear gunshots, especially over engine and wind noise.

Though Chelsea Gear admittedly made a vulgar hand gesture at Mough, Tolley argued that was irrelevant.

“I wish she hadn’t done it, but that’s not what this case is about,” the defense attorney said. “You have to know what Richard Gear knew at the time, not what Chelsea Gear did on the highway.”

Gear admitted Wednesday that he didn’t know that Mough was the man who had followed his daughters, telling jurors that “you would’ve had to have been there” to understand the feeling he had, which was “something I can’t put into words.”

Mauldin argued that the evidence didn’t fit a self-defense claim because, among other things, investigators determined that Mough’s motorcycle never drove onto Gear’s property.

“It was on the roadway, where it had every right to be,” he said.

The jury of nine women and three men began deliberating in mid-afternoon and came to a quick verdict."