The Post and Courier - Charleston, S.C.
Author: RICHARD GREEN Jr.
Date: Nov 19, 1999
Start Page: 1
Section: B
Text Word Count: 539

A 27-year-old man who decided to testify during his second trial on a murder charge was found not guilty Thursday in the 1995 shooting death of Phillip "Bunny" Gibbs Jr.

But Gibbs' family isn't so sure that William E. Hall Jr.'s testimony is what let him walk out of jail after nearly four years.

"I don't know, but we know that the forewoman was the aunt of one of the defendant's witnesses, the defendant's girlfriend," said Phyllis Jones, Gibbs' sister. "We don't think it was right."

The juror told Circuit Judge Daniel Pieper of her relationship, but the judge let her stay in the jury pool because she said she could still be fair, Jones said.

Each side can excuse a certain number of potential jurors during jury selection, but Deputy Solicitor Jack Sinclaire said he had used his legal limit of five strikes by the time the woman's name was called.

Later, Sinclaire said he asked Pieper to remove the woman from the jury for legal cause, but the judge refused. Circuit Judge Danny Martin, who tried the case, made the woman forewoman.

After deliberating several hours Thursday in Charleston County General Sessions Court, the jury asked to visit the murder scene. Later the jurors wanted Martin to tell them again the difference between murder - killing someone with malice - and voluntary manslaughter - killing someone in the heat of passion.

"When they came back and asked the judge the difference between murder and manslaughter, we were sure he (Hall) was going to get one or the other," Jones said. "But they shocked us when they came back out with a not guilty verdict."

"Well, God has the last say," she said. "You reap what you sow."

Hall, known in Charleston as Tyson Langley, was convicted in August 1997 at his first trial, in which he chose not to testify. But the S.C. Supreme Court reversed that conviction in March and gave him a new trial because jurors were shown a graduation photograph of the victim.

The high court said the case was so weak that showing the picture might have unfairly caused the jury to convict out of sympa- thy.

This week at his second trial, Hall said he was a hip-hop entertainer in town looking for work, not a drug dealer as some witnesses suggested, Sinclaire said. Hall said he saw another man shoot Gibbs but that he had nothing to do with it.

Gibbs, who used crack cocaine from time to time, went to a house on Moultrie Street where two rival groups of drug dealers were selling crack, according to testimony. Three days earlier, members of one group had robbed one member of the other group.

Though Gibbs had nothing to do with the robbery, Sinclaire argued that Hall and another man known only as Derrick meant to rob Gibbs in retaliation, threaten him or perhaps kill him. Whatever the reason, they were seen following Gibbs from the house, and Gibbs was shot once in the mouth at point-blank range.

Gibbs, 30, worked as a bricklayer and had three children, including a daughter who lives in California and two sons in the Charles- ton area, according to relatives.

Credit: The Post and Courier

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