After a six-day trial, a Bulloch County jury acquitted one of two men Friday charged with murdering a Statesboro preacher, but convicted the other, who was in prison at the time.
Tarell Momon, 36, an inmate at Dooly State Prison, was found guilty of malice murder but not guilty of possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. Prosecutors said he directed the hit-style killing from his prison cell and thus was responsible for the June 30, 2013, shooting death of 51-year-old Michael Anthony Riley in his Greenbriar Trail home.
Riley was shot in the left eye as he slept around 6:45 a.m.
Ogeechee Judicial Circuit Assistant District Attorney Joseph Cushner requested Momon be sentenced to life without parole. Bulloch County Superior Court Judge John R. Turner sentenced Momon to life with parole, to serve consecutively with a life sentence he is already serving for crimes in 1995 in Newton County including armed robbery, aggravated assault, kidnapping, aggravated sodomy and firearms charges.
Terrance Ray Griswould, 30, a music producer from Augusta, was found not guilty of malice murder and possession a firearm during the commission of a crime.
Police and state prosecutors said they believed Griswould was involved because cellphone records tracked his phone as traveling from Augusta to Statesboro and back during the time of the murder, and witnesses saw his car at the scene. Griswould testified he loaned his car, containing his phone that was charging, to Travis Lorenzo Berrian, 29, of Augusta.
Berrian was one of the five suspects in the murder. He committed suicide after pulling a gun in a probation office when officers tried to arrest him in July 2013. He shot a probation officer, wounding her, before shooting himself fatally in the neck.
Riley's wife, Antoinette Braddy Riley, 50, of Greenbriar Trail, and her daughter, Katrina Denise Ledford, 30, of Davisboro, both pleaded guilty in June to malice murder in the death of Michael Riley. Each is serving a sentence of life with parole. Both testified earlier in the week.
Jurors began deliberating around 4 p.m. Thursday, after hearing evidence for five days. They went home after an hour Thursday but resumed deliberations Friday, reviewing a recording of a police interview with Griswould at 8:30 a.m. before returning to the jury room. Just before 11 a.m. Friday, the jury reached the verdicts.
Turner told Griswould he was free to go after announcing he was found not guilty of the crimes with which he was charged.
During testimony throughout the week, prosecutors and witnesses told the jury that Momon was a validated member of the Gangster Disciples, a Chicago-based gang.
Ledford testified Tuesday that she met Momon online through a social media site and the two began a relationship. However, Momon had been an inmate at Washington State Prison before that, where Ledford was a guard. Earlier testimony stated she was terminated for involvement with Momon, as relationships between guards and inmates are forbidden, but prison warden Donald Barrow testified Tuesday that Ledford was terminated because she refused to submit to a strip search after someone reported she was smuggling contraband into the prison.
Ledford testified Tuesday that she still considers Momon her boyfriend, admitting she visited him "almost every weekend" and talked to him on a cellphone daily. She acknowledged he had a cellphone, which is contraband in prison, and admitted texting and calling him.
Antoinette Riley told jurors Wednesday that she and Michael Riley, who was listed as pastor of New Birth Nondenominational Church in Statesboro, slept in separate bedrooms because of marital distress. She said she planned to file for divorce after the Fourth of July in 2013.
She said her husband, angry because she spent too much time with family in Sandersville and worked too much, ransacked the room in which she kept her clothing and personal items. She told about an argument during which she unplugged his treadmill while he used it so they could talk, and he physically attacked her.
Text messages between Ledford, Antoinette Riley and Momon told a story of how they planned the murder, prosecutors said. But Riley testified that she thought the men Momon would send to "handle" her husband were going to beat him, not shoot him.
Ledford denied knowledge of plans to shoot her stepfather as well. Both she and Antoinette Riley denied being guilty of killing Michael Riley, although each pleaded guilty in June.
Neither Momon nor Griswould chose to testify during the trial.
It was not determined who actually fired the 9 mm handgun that was used to kill Riley. The murder weapon was never found.
Holli Deal Saxon may be reached at (912) 489-9414.