PHOTO: Earlier this week, a Cherokee County Jury found a Boaz man guilty of Cattle Rustling, stemming from a 2014 charge. (File Photo)

By Staff Reports

CENTRE, Ala. — A Cherokee County jury found a Boaz man guilty last Thursday (May 11) in a cattle rustling charge from 2014 after a trial during which both the prosecutor and a juror sang on the record.

Michael Chad Stephens, age 35 of a Noojin Drive address, was found guilty of Receiving Stolen Property in the First Degree in connection with cattle that had been stolen from a pasture near his home and delivered to a Cherokee County farm. Both the prosecutor and a juror sang during the closing argument. Witnesses testified that the cattle were worth about $20,000.00 but the defendant sold them for $10,000.00.

Deputy District Attorney Scott Lloyd, a Plainview graduate, said after the trial, “There’s a figure of speech for when property sells so cheap everybody involved knows it’s stolen, and there’s even a song about it.  So, I told the jurors I would sing the first three words of an old George Jones song and let them finish it in their heads.  I sang the first words of the chorus from, “The Corvette Song:” “Oh she was…” and then I stopped to let the jurors sing the rest of it in their heads.  But one juror evidently didn’t hear me say that I wanted them to sing in their heads and he sang back to me out loud, “Hotter than a Two-Dollar Pistol!””

Lloyd added, “This trial was a lot of fun.  We had a good jury who could see through the smokescreens. Investigator Tim Matthews from the State Bureau of Investigation put together a good case for me to present.  I told the jurors in opening statement that they might feel like a jury from the Wild West because what we had for them to hear was ‘an ol’ timey cattle-rustlin’ case.’”

Lloyd closed, “I would like to thank District Attorney Mike O’Dell for giving me the opportunity to represent the people of DeKalb and Cherokee Counties in this case and many others for over twenty years.”