The prominent Atlanta attorney convicted in 2018 of his wife's murder saw that conviction overturned by Georgia's highest court Thursday. The state Supreme Court ruled that the jury should have been informed during the trial of Claud "Tex" McIver that they could consider the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter, and unanimously overturned McIver's felony murder conviction, CNN reports. McIver, who fatally shot his wife as she sat in the front passenger seat of a moving car in 2016, will get a new trial. His defense team plans to file a motion to see him released on bond. McIver has previously said he was asleep in the backseat with the gun in his lap and it went off accidentally when he was abruptly woken up.
The court found that the evidence presented to show McIver killed his wife purposely was "disputed and circumstantial," and that based on the evidence presented, "the jury could have concluded that the revolver was not deliberately or intentionally fired, bur rather, as McIver suggests, discharged as a result of his being startled awake, reflexively or involuntarily clutching at the bag holding the firearm, and inadvertently contacting the trigger." McIver's attorneys agree, saying their client was "deprived of a fair trial because the jury was not given the opportunity to find that the shooting was entirely the result of negligence, as opposed to an intentional killing." The court also overturned his firearm possession conviction, but affirmed his influencing a witness conviction, 11 Alive reports. (More Atlanta stories.)
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