Immunity Hearing For Former Bama Basketball Player Darius Miles To Continue Tuesday

TUSCALOOSA, AL — There was no ruling handed down Monday by Tuscaloosa County Circuit Court Judge Daniel Pruet at the conclusion of the first day of a pre-trial immunity hearing for former Alabama basketball player and capital murder suspect Darius Miles.

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The hearing, which will continue on Tuesday, lasted just over three hours and its arguments mostly centered around hours of video footage being entered into evidence.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, an immunity hearing allows a judge to rule on aspects of self-defense in certain cases if the evidence is conclusive enough. This is to save both time and money for a lengthy trial if enough evidence is available to make a definitive ruling. Otherwise, the case is sent to a jury trial.

As Patch previously reported, Miles is accused of capital murder after allegedly giving his legally owned handgun to his childhood friend Michael Lynn Davis before Davis used the gun in the shooting that ultimately left 23-year-old Birmingham mother Jamea Harris dead.

Davis was shot twice during the exchange of gunfire with Cedric Johnson — Harris's boyfriend who has yet to testify in court as to his role in the Jan. 15 shooting on Grace Street.

Click the link below for a minute-by-minute timeline of the events of the fatal shooting.

ALSO READ: Bama Basketball Shooting Latest | Video Evidence Illuminates Tragedy

Attorneys for Miles have insisted since his preliminary hearing in February that Johnson was the actual aggressor and Miles provided the gun to his friend because he feared for his safety and that of others when he saw a gun passed to Johnson when the two groups had a brief verbal altercation on the Strip less than 10 minutes before the shooting — their first and only interaction of the night prior to the gunfight that left Harris dead.

The case also received international attention when it was revealed that former Alabama basketball standout and No. 2 overall selection in the 2023 NBA Draft Brandon Miller was present at the scene of the shooting.

However, as has been widely reported, Miller has never been considered a suspect or charged with any criminal wrongdoing in connection to the fatal shooting of Jamea Harris.

WITNESS TESTIMONY

In total, six witnesses were called to testify Monday by the defense — the Turner Law Group — beginning with Jay Jarrett, the owner of Twelve25.

As Patch previously reported, the popular club is located on the Strip and saw both groups involved in the Jan. 15 shooting visit the establishment following Alabama basketball's blowout win over LSU in Coleman Coliseum hours earlier.

Jarrett explained that the business has a strict "zero tolerance" policy for weapons and has different security measures in place to ensure the safety of its patrons.

Among these measures is an enforced "pat-down" policy for male patrons, who are searched for firearms or weapons before being allowed to enter the club during its bar hours. He also said the club has a metal detector and incorporates metal-detecting wands to search patrons.

Jarrett went on to say that it was "Ladies Night" the evening of Jan. 14 and then said he had known Miles for roughly three years.

ALSO READ: Bama Basketball Shooting | Understanding State's Self-Defense Laws

"Every interaction I've had with Darius has been very respectful," he said when asked by defense attorney Grace Prince about his relationship with her client.

Jarrett said he spoke with Miles in the hours before the shooting and said Miles had requested an order of lemon pepper chicken wings to go. In video evidence viewed by Tuscaloosa Patch and presented in court prior to Monday's hearing, Miles can be seen carrying a to-go box as he, Michael Davis and Alabama basketball player Jaden Bradley leave the Twelve25 for the night.

With respect to the arguments over the hours of video evidence from multiple businesses, Jarrett said he was asked for the video by Violent Crimes Unit investigators the Monday following the shooting — more than 24 hours after Miles and Davis were charged with capital murder.

He also reiterated that at no point in the hours prior to the shooting did the two groups involved in the shooting have any interaction inside his club.

As for the Tuscaloosa County District Attorney's Office, issues regarding video evidence were raised when Jon Alford, owner of the Houndstooth Sports Bar, took the stand after being called by the Turner Law Group to testify. This was due to the argument that prosecutors had not been provided several hours of video from Houndstooth's multiple cameras as the defense attempted to enter the video evidence into the record.

The third witness to take the stand was Tuscaloosa Police Department Cyber Crimes Unit Sgt. Richard Wilkins, who described how he extracted data from three cell phones recovered by the Tuscaloosa Violent Crimes Unit.

These phones belonged to Jamea Harris, her boyfriend Cedric Johnson, and passenger Asia Humphrey.

It's worth noting that, according to Wilkins, the phones were not subjected to standard data extraction methods until they were submitted on May 25 — the day after bond was denied for Miles by Judge Pruet.

The details of the data pulled from the three phones were not discussed in open court on Monday, apart from a single video with a timestamp of 8:26 p.m. on Jan. 14. However, the specifics of that video were not disclosed.

Tuscaloosa County E911 supervisor Cori Poe briefly took the stand to discuss one of the initial 911 calls, which was played for those in attendance. The caller, who Patch has chosen to not identify by name, described one of the individuals involved in the shootout — a description that differed greatly from that of Michael Davis the morning of the shooting.

Indeed, the panicked caller described a man in a flannel shirt participating in the shooting, which could align with defense attorney Mary Turner's argument that a shotgun was retrieved from the trunk of the aforementioned red Impala driven by Shu'Bonte Greene and fired during the shooting.

Pruet would ultimately issue a warrant for Greene's arrest after his failure to comply with the subpoena after being served.

University of Alabama Police Department Lt. Daniel Pate was then called to testify during a portion of the hearing that focused on body camera footage.

Pate is the head of the UAPD Criminal Investigations Division, where one of his primary duties is to advise the court on body camera footage obtained by the department's officers.

In the only body camera footage shown in court during Monday's hearing, two men are seen speaking with a UAPD officer at the Walk of Champions — one of two crime scenes in the case where Johnson, driving Harris' Jeep, stopped after seeing a police officer following the shooting.

During this segment of the video, Johnson was at DCH Regional Medical Center and not present at the scene. But in one segment of body camera footage played in court, two men are seen discussing the shooting at the Walk of Champions crime scene with a responding UAPD officer.

Turner argues that these two individuals — Jack Thompson and KeeVon Johnson — were direct witnesses to the shooting and were occupants of a red Chevrolet Impala who met with Johnson, Harris and Humphrey at an apartment complex off of Grace Street in the minutes immediately prior to the shots being fired.

KeeVon Johnson died in March at the age of 26.

The driver of the Impala shown in the video is allegedly Shu'Bonte Greene — a Birmingham-area native with an extensive criminal record. Greene has been served a subpoena during the course of the legal proceedings but has yet to testify under oath.

Turner also insisted that the group has ties to criminal gang activity, which was objected to by the District Attorney's Office during Monday's hearing.

LOOSE ENDS

David Hill, owner of Alabama Investigative Services, has been employed by the Turner Law Group on this case and has primarily worked to serve subpoenas to witnesses.

Among those he has had the most difficulty serving on a subpoena has been Cedric Johnson, who was successfully served in court during the last bond hearing in May, but who has yet to be successfully served for the pre-trial immunity hearing.

Hill was allowed to testify on Monday, despite objections from the District Attorney's Office, and told of multiple unsuccessful attempts to serve Johnson a subpoena at more than one verified address.

Indeed, Hill said he has been aided by three other investigators licensed by the state of Alabama, but has only been met with unanswered doors and mailboxes with Johnson's mail.

Hill even went so far as to say that one individual he spoke with, later found to be Johnson's mother, told Hill that she did not know Johnson and that he was not a resident at the address provided to the defense team for Darius Miles. He was also able to use Johnson's social media presence to confirm one of the addresses provided.

Tempers flared, though, as the hearing came to a close, with Judge Pruet openly chiding the defense after he claimed Turner made the comment that the "defense was being picked on."

With the lion's share of arguments focusing on the admissibility of video evidence, Judge Pruet insisted he had admitted several pieces of evidence for the defense over objections from the Tuscaloosa County District Attorney's Office.

"This room should be the least chaotic place in this case," Pruet told Turner and others in the seventh-floor courtroom, before going on to tell Turner that if she felt she was being "picked on," to file a formal motion instead of making remarks at the bench.

He then noted the "vast chasm" separating an immunity hearing and a trial, before Turner stood her ground and doubled down on the difficulties faced by the defense with respect to the admission of evidence.

This represented the close of the proceedings for the day and Pruet set the immunity hearing to resume Tuesday morning at 9 a.m.

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