A Lowndes County jury found a Columbus man guilty of second-degree murder Friday at the end of a nearly week-long trial.
Aaron James Mitchell, 28, was tried for first-degree murder for fatally shooting Marty Moore of Columbus on Ninth Avenue South on Aug. 7, 2019. At the time, investigators reported the two got into an argument which escalated to violence.
However, at the trial, Mitchell and his attorney, Rod Ray of Columbus, argued Mitchell shot Moore in self-defense. They said Mitchell and Moore were at a gathering in south Columbus the night of the shooting. While there, they said, Moore was drunk and high on cocaine and became aggressive with multiple people before trying to start a fight with Mitchell.
For someone to be convicted of second-degree murder, a jury must find the defendant killed someone by acting in a highly dangerous way that showed no regard for human life but without deliberate design to kill the victim.
Judge Lee Coleman also instructed the jury they could consider convicting Mitchell of manslaughter — a lesser charge than both first- and second-degree murder — if they found he had shot Moore because of an “actual, genuine” belief the killing was necessary, but that belief was not reasonable at the time.
Mitchell’s sentencing has been scheduled for May 24.
‘I was scared’
During the trial, prosecutors questioned multiple witnesses who confirmed Moore had behaved aggressively toward people at the party, including Mitchell. At one point Mitchell went to his car, pursued by Moore, which is when Mitchell got a gun and shot him.
However, none of the witnesses said Moore was armed when Mitchell shot him, though at different points in the trial Mitchell said Moore had a bottle and even a gun. Investigators did not find either of those objects at the crime scene.
“What was Aaron Mitchell afraid of?” District Attorney Scott Colom asked the jury during closing arguments.
He also argued that whether Moore behaved aggressively toward Mitchell or anyone else, the case wasn’t about what the victim did.
“Regardless of how they try to paint Marty Moore … Marty Moore’s life mattered,” he said. “It mattered to a lot of people. He didn’t deserve to die over a fist fight. He didn’t deserve to die because he lost his temper.”
But Mitchell said on the stand he had known Moore all his life. He said he knew Moore had been shot before, had been arrested before and had once beat a man so severely the man’s eye was knocked out.
He said when Moore tried to fight him the night of the shooting, he claimed to not be afraid of Mitchell’s weapon.
“He clearly said, ‘I’m not scared of no gun. I’ve been shot before,’” Mitchell told the jury.
“I didn’t want him to hurt me,” he added. “I just wanted to get home to my kids and my wife, and I was scared.”
However, Mitchell also said on the stand that Moore had a gun when he approached, something he did not tell investigators the night of the shooting. Colom and Assistant District Attorney Collen Hudson said that claim called the defendant’s credibility into question, since Ray had not otherwise tried to make the argument that Moore was armed with a gun.
“All those eye witnesses say that … Marty was unarmed when Aaron shot him because Marty wanted to fight him,” Hudson said after the trial. “Then we had scientific experts (and) law enforcement witnesses. Shell casings on the scene came from Aaron’s gun. The fragment inside Marty was from Aaron’s gun. … None of that was in dispute even from Aaron. He said from the beginning, ‘Yeah, I shot him.’ He felt justified shooting Marty because Marty wanted to fight.”
Ray argued that even if Moore wasn’t armed, Mitchell had good reason to be scared of him.
“I guess (Mitchell) was supposed to get the hell beat out of him, maybe get his eye knocked out, get his head bashed on the concrete, serious bodily injury,” he said sarcastically during closing arguments. “… We had a guy that is looking down the barrel of a gun saying, ‘I’ve been shot before. … I ain’t scared.’”
The Dispatch was unable to speak with Ray after the trial, and Ray did not return a call from The Dispatch by press time.
Colom said the case was a “lose-lose situation.”
“Marty Moore’s not coming back now, and his family’s still traumatized from the loss,” he said. “And then Aaron Mitchell was found guilty and there’s trauma around that. But I do think the jury listened to the law, they listened to the facts. They decided that an unarmed person shouldn’t be shot and killed because they want to fight.”
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