Louisiana v. Marshall
Annotate this CaseIn 2009, defendant Daniel Marshall ended a love triangle by repeatedly shooting Ronald Hodges, Jr., as Hodges ran toward Marshall, jumping off the porch of a residence. The residence belonged to Ebony Gastinell, the mother of his three children. In all, Hodges sustained five gunshot wounds: two to the back, and projectile fragment abrasions on his right shoulder, arm and hand. The police found nine spent casings scattered on the ground but did not find any firearms discarded on the scene. Following defendant’s second degree murder trial and his conviction and sentence for the lesser verdict of manslaughter, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal vacated defendant’s conviction and sentence upon finding that the prosecutor’s use of defendant’s post-arrest silence was not harmless because it undercut his plausible self-defense claim. The Louisiana Supreme Court granted the State’s writ application, and, after reviewing the record and the applicable law, reversed the judgment of the court of appeal and reinstated defendant’s conviction and sentence.
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