Jury: Gardhigh guilty of murder
A jury finds Corey Demarcus Gardhigh guilty on five counts connected with the beating death of Paul Anthony Grady at his home.
A Floyd County Superior Court jury found Corey Demarcus Gardhigh guilty of murder Thursday in the beating death of a Lindale man he said owed him back wages.
Judge Billy Sparks will sentence Gardhigh at a later date.
Paul Anthony Grady died of blunt force trauma injuries on Jan. 4, 2017, a week after Gardhigh attacked him at his home. An autopsy revealed 24 separate sites of impact on Grady’s face and head, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation medical examiner.
“Corey Gardhigh was caught literally red-handed. He had blood literally on his hands,” Assistant District Attorney Luke Martin told the jury in his closing remarks Thursday.
Gardhigh’s attorney, Durante Partridge, said he planned to review the proceedings of the four-day trial to see if there are any avenues for appeal.
“It was a tough situation. There was a lot to overcome,” he said.
In his summation to the jury, Partridge underscored what he said were conflicting testimonies and an incomplete investigation.
Grady’s stepson described a man in white pants with a blue stripe running from the scene and jumping into a white car driven by another man.
Bank video from earlier in the day — when a $153 check Grady had written to Gardhigh was rejected — showed Gardhigh in an orange jacket. He was with his mother and his two children when he went to Grady’s home.
Witnesses differed on if Grady “lunged at” or made contact with Gardhigh first as the two stood arguing on Grady’s porch, Partridge said.
He also painted a picture of a combative injured man who could have fallen or otherwise hurt himself further after Gardhigh left.
And he said police stopped looking for other suspects when they found the bloody check bearing Gardhigh’s name.
“This was a one-track investigation. One story. One check . ... In this situation, (the facts) are all over the place. The state falls short of its burden of proof,” Partridge said.
But Martin said any inconsistencies could be attributed to the witnesses’ emotional states or a desire to shield Gardhigh, who admitted during an interview at the jail that he had been wearing a blue and white jacket at Grady’s house.
Martin played the 911 tape from when Grady’s stepson found him lying unconscious and bleeding on the sidewalk. The injured man’s labored breathing — deep, rasping, gasping and slow — was so loud the dispatcher heard it clearly over the panicked teen’s voice.
Martin also showed video of an interview with Gardhigh’s 11-year-old son conducted in a room at Harbor House, the Northwest Georgia Child Advocacy Center.
The boy said his father grappled with Grady, threw him down the steps and hit him several times in the face while he was lying on the ground.
As Grady was taking hits that split his lip, broke his nose and cut the area above his eye, Martin said, the back and side of his skull was slamming him into the concrete sidewalk.
“The one eyewitness whose story makes sense implicates Corey Gardhigh,” he said.
Martin referenced a threatening phone text Gardhigh sent to Grady in December that said “I don’t give a f—— about your family or my freedom,” and the bank teller’s testimony that Gardhigh said “I’ll kill him” when the check was refused.
“This case matters to a lot of people,” Martin said.
He showed a photo of Grady’s bereaved family, then ran more of the Harbor House tape. In it, Gardhigh’s son said his father told him — as they were driving away — that he should handle any personal disputes the same way.
“Mr. Gardhigh, you didn’t give a f—- about his family or your freedom then,” Martin said, then turned to face the panel. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, find him guilty now.”
The jury deliberated three and a half hours before announcing Gardhigh’s guilt on the felony murder charge.
They downgraded a malice murder charge to voluntary manslaughter and also rendered guilty verdicts on charges of aggravated battery, aggravated assault and thirddegree cruelty to a child for involving his son.