Gunfire interrupted the kinetic weekend energy of a crowded Baton Rouge nightclub in October 2016. Partygoers inside The Executive Club along North Foster Drive cowered after shots rang just outside the front door.
When Christopher Ryan Edwards, a 30-year-old Port Allen man, spilled through the entryway bloodied from a gunshot wound to the chest, patrons sprang into action trying to resuscitate him. They were not successful, however, as Edwards died within moments on the barroom floor.
On Thursday, inside a Baton Rouge courtroom, a jury convicted Edwards' killer of second-degree murder.
Edwards got into an altercation with Horace Alexander Smith and his brother Mack Arthur Smith the night of the shooting. They clashed when Edwards rebuffed Horace's handshake inside the club. A few minutes after security guards removed the two brothers from the nightclub, they returned and Horace Smith opened fire, according to prosecutors.
The guilty verdict all but ensures that Horace Smith, 45, will receive a mandatory life sentence. Jurors deliberated three hours before convicting him, bringing a four-day trial to an end. District Judge Brad Myers set sentencing for March 13.
This week's trial began Monday, and attorneys spent a day and a half selecting a jury of nine women and three men. They heard opening statements from both sides Tuesday afternoon, and testimony began Wednesday. While recapping the case for jurors on Thursday, Assistant District Attorney Shoneak Glass showed a still surveillance image of Edwards folding his arms as Horace Smith reached out to shake his hand amid the festivities inside the rollicking nightclub. That slight sparked an altercation that led to Edwards' death, testimony revealed.
He was shot dead around 1:45 a.m. Oct. 23, 2016, inside the club in the 2200 block of North Foster Drive.
Byron Edwards testified that he was standing next to his younger brother as they exited the club together when he saw Horace Smith shoot Christopher. Prosecutors presented surveillance footage from inside the bar that, according to investigators, showed Horace Smith pacing outside the front door as the victim and his brother left with another family member. Prosecutors said the video showed Horace Smith holding a firearm in one hand and a white Styrofoam cup in the other.
Moments after Christopher Edwards was shot, Horace Smith was captured on security cameras at a neighboring business, holding a gun in his hand as he walked back to his car.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I am 100% convinced beyond reasonable doubt that Horace Smith murdered Christopher Edwards, because he did it," East Baton Rouge Assistant District Attorney Schyler Brooks argued to close out the trial. "The evidence is there. Look at it, examine it. Think back to all of the testimony."
But investigators never recovered footage of the actual shooting and admitted it may have been erased after the incident.
Following the trial, Horace Smith's trial attorney, Robert Tucker Jr., called for an independent probe into the actions of Baton Rouge Police Department homicide detectives who investigated the murder. He told jurors at trial Thursday that officers bungled the murder investigation early on by failing to remove one of The Executive Club's managers and another man from the lounge after the shooting, while it was still an active crime scene. Tucker argued that footage from a surveillance camera hanging above the front door went missing as a result.
"Baton Rouge Police Department allowed two people that maybe they knew, maybe they didn't, to walk through a taped-off crime scene and go back and mess with surveillance footage," he alleged in his closing arguments.
Investigators seized two DVR systems with extensive surveillance footage of the club's interior bar. But Tucker said video evidence from the outside camera that could have proved Horace Smith wasn't the shooter went "conveniently missing." Characterizing it as part of a "disturbing pattern of corruption," the defense attorney said the investigators' blunders were emblematic of systemic failures in the department.
"Mr. Smith has been directly impacted by the misconduct of department officers, including the deliberate mishandling of evidence through false statements and the intentional concealment of crucial information that could serve vital to my client's defense," Tucker said in a statement following the verdict. "This case is not an isolated incident but part of a much broader and deeply troubling pattern of unethical practices that have gone unchecked for far too long, emphasizing why the Baton Rouge Police Department has repeatedly come under fire for its conduct in recent years, with the most recent being the Brave Cave Scandal."
Prosecutors said Mack Smith, 46, was also armed at the time of the shooting, although he did not fire the fatal gunshots. He was indicted as a principal to the murder, and his trial is set to begin May 19, court records show. If convicted, he too faces a mandatory life sentence.
As part of their defense, Horace Smith's attorneys sought to counter the prosecution's version of events with a story of their own. Smith's sister testified that Byron Edwards, the state's key eyewitness, held a long-standing grudge against Horace Smith dating back to 2008. That's when Horace Smith and one of Byron Edwards' other younger brothers had a fight over a woman the two men dated. Defense attorneys suggested Byron falsely identified Horace Smith as the shooter as part of a "family vendetta."
Later on in the day, Dennis Knox, a regular at The Executive Club, said he was there the night of the shooting and saw Christopher Edwards get into a prior fight with another man in the club. He said they threw punches and bottles at one another and that man remained outside the establishment at the time of the shooting. Knox also testified that Byron Edwards was inside near the rear of the lounge when shots rang out and couldn't have seen who shot his brother.
"I know for a fact they got the wrong man because I was there that night and I saw a lot," he told jurors.
But Glass, one of the prosecutors, reminded the jury of video evidence that showed Byron Edwards walking out with the victim and rushing back in to aid him when Christopher was shot. She also noted surveillance footage that BRPD detective Zac Woodring recovered from Capital City Produce, the business next door to the nightclub, that showed Horace and Mack Smith holding guns after the shooting.
"Ladies and gentlemen, he did not get the wrong man," she said. "He went with the evidence."