Jury hears about table leg murder suspect hoped to club victim with

Well, at least the jury knows where the table leg came from.

Jurors in the murder trial of Jerry Wayne “Scarface” Merritt heard Monday from the defendant’s sister, who talked about the frequent confrontations her brother had with Anthony Wayne “Red” Taylor, 44, whom Merritt fatally shot June 6, 2014, outside the Pure Gas Station on Columbus’ Fort Benning Road.

Taylor’s shooting shortly after 9 a.m. followed his hitting Merritt over the head with a metal pipe in the station 7½ hours earlier, provoking Merritt to swear he’d kill Taylor the next time he saw him, authorities said.

Jurors last week saw a store security camera video that showed Merritt in the Pure station about 1:30 a.m. that day, walking through the business with a table leg, before Taylor burst in and whacked Merritt with the pipe.

Investigators believe the pipe was a metal post from a chain link fence, because they saw one outside the gas station after Taylor’s shooting. One reason authorities knew about the earlier confrontation was that the store called the police to report that while raising the fence post to hit Merritt, Taylor broke an overhead light in the the 1538 Fort Benning Road business.

Merritt fell to the floor after Taylor hit him, then jumped up and chased Taylor out the door, the video showed.

Merritt later returned to the store with a .32-caliber revolver and waited for Taylor to show up. When a cousin dropped Taylor off there to buy cigarettes, Merritt pulled the gun and chased Taylor around the station, firing until a bullet hit Taylor in the back, piercing his heart and lung. He died later at the hospital.

The sister’s account

Taking the witness stand Monday, Merritt’s sister Pamela Merritt recalled her brother’s waking her up about 2:30 a.m. that night to show her his battered face. “His face was all tore up,” she said. She got him in her car, and they went out looking for Taylor.

“I had a stick,” she testified, saying she intended to teach Taylor a lesson.

Prosecutor Wesley Lambertus asked what sort of stick she had. “Oh baby, I keep a table leg,” she answered, later adding, “I was going to whip him with my table leg.” She usually keeps the makeshift club in her car, she said.

She never found Taylor that night, she said.

That was the second time she’d gone out hunting for him after he hit her brother, she said. Some months earlier, Jerry Merritt came to her and showed her his swollen face, saying Taylor had punched him and “knocked him cold out.” That time she took her 24-year-old son and 25-year-old daughter with her to hunt Taylor down.

They found Taylor that night: “I said, ‘Red, why you jump on Scarface?’ He said, ‘Because he talks too much,’” she testified.

She decided then that Taylor was too drunk to be held accountable for his actions: “I wasn’t going to let my kids jump on that man, knowing he’d been drinking,” she said.

The next day Taylor apologized to her brother, who afterward told her to leave Taylor alone, she said.

Despite such bullying, she had no personal distaste for Taylor, whom she considered just another one of the guys who frequented the gas station along with her brother.

“I didn’t hate Red. … I never disliked Red,” she said. “I saw Red every day.” Most of the time Taylor and her brother “as friends” were “laughing and talking” at the gas station where they hung out, she said.

Defense attorney Jennifer Curry elicited the sister’s testimony to bolster Merritt’s defense that he developed a “battered persons syndrome” from Taylor’s incessant bullying, and finally decided he had to shoot Taylor to defend himself.

Lambertus told jurors the killing clearly was a case of cold-blooded vengeance in which Merritt aimed to make Taylor pay for beating him hours earlier.

Merritt, 50, is charged with murder, aggravated assault and using a firearm to commit a crime. Attorneys are through presenting evidence in the trial. Judge Arthur Smith III has set closing arguments for 9 a.m. Tuesday in his Government Center courtroom.

This story was originally published February 6, 2017 at 4:41 PM with the headline "Jury hears about table leg murder suspect hoped to club victim with."