A jury Friday found Devree Garner not guilty of ordering a 2015 Battle Creek shooting.

The six men and six women deliberated about 2 1/2 hours before announcing their decision on two counts of assault with intent to murder. Garner could have faced up to life in prison if convicted of either of the attempted murder charges.

Garner, 32, didn't say anything but wiped tears from both eyes after the verdict was announced in Calhoun County Circuit Court on the fourth day of his second trial on the same charges. The first trial earlier this year ended with a deadlocked jury.

Assistant Prosecutor Tamara Towns argued in the trial this week that Garner was guilty because he ordered someone else to shoot Jonathan Jones, 38, and his mother, Marvita Pugh, outside her home on Algonquin Street in Bedford Township on July 3, 2015.

Garner testified he went to the house early that morning to fight Jones but denied he had anything to do with telling another man to shoot at Jones.

Jones was struck twice as he stood next to his mother in the yard. He was treated and later released from the hospital. Pugh was not injured.

Garner told the jury Thursday he didn't know the three men who approached the yard, that he never told anyone to shoot Jones and doesn't know who fired six shots.

But Towns told the jury that Jones and Garner had a long-standing dispute and that Garner organized the shooting and told the unidentified gunman to fire. She cited testimony that Garner left in the same car as the shooter. No other arrests were made in the shooting.

"I think the jury had a hard time believing, even if he said it, they had a hard time holding him accountable for somebody else's actions," defense attorney Ronald Pichlik said. "It is a hard sell for the state to convince 12 people that you are responsible for what somebody else did just because you may have said something. And it was not ever crystal clear for them that he actually ever said anything."

Prosecutors and Battle Creek police have alleged in other hearings that Garner is a member of a Battle Creek street gang and has enough influence to order another member of the gang to shoot someone.

Towns argued this week that information about alleged gang membership and gang culture should be allowed to show the jury that Garner could have enough control to order the shooting.

"The average citizen doesn't understand the gang culture and it helps clarify a motive for the jury."

Jones testified in a hearing without the jury present, that he was threatened by Garner because Jones testified against Dawon Haymer that Haymer twice shot Jones in 2009 and 2013. Haymer is serving a 35- to 70-year prison term after a conviction in the 2013 shooting.

Pichlik argued to Judge John Hallacy against allowing any mention of possible gang ties.

"If you put gang membership in front of a jury it will be a conviction," he said.

In 2014 both the Michigan Court of Appeals and the Michigan Supreme Court overturned a first-degree murder conviction in another Calhoun County case citing as prejudicial testimony about operations of a gang and linking the defendant to possible membership.

Hallacy ruled in the Garner case that prosecutors could not discuss possible gang membership and after the verdict Pichlik said, "I think it's critical for the jury that once you bring in the word 'gang' that it evokes certain emotions. I can't predict what a jury would have done but with that said there was a lot of dancing around the issue that came out in the trial."

Pichlik noted that police testimony noted discussion about groups of people living in the same neighborhood and that the police department's Gang Suppression Unit took control of the investigation.

"I think you would have had to be pretty thick not to figure out that was what was going on and that this was being alluded to if not outright stated," Pichlik said. "But the word gang is a pejorative and the jury not hearing that term was certainly a big deal."

Garner remained in custody after the jury verdict. He was sentenced in November to a  year in jail for resisting police and is awaiting trial early next year on charges he tried to intimidate both Jones and Pugh not to testify against him in the attempted murder trial.

Contact Trace Christenson at 269-966-0685 or tchrist@battlecreekenquirer. Follow him on Twitter: @TSChristenson

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