Georgia court rules on conviction of Columbus man who claimed bullying sparked fatal shooting
Jerry Wayne “Scarface” Merritt claimed he was so regularly bullied and beaten by Anthony Taylor that he felt his life was in danger the morning of June 6, 2014, when he ambushed Taylor outside a Fort Benning Road gas station, chased him down and shot him dead with a .32-caliber pistol.
But a Columbus jury rejected the defense that Merritt suffered from a sort of “battered person” syndrome that drove him to kill Taylor hours after the two had a confrontation at the Pure Gas Station where they regularly hung out. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Now the Georgia Supreme Court has upheld that verdict and sentence, rejecting Merritt’s arguments that his defense was ineffective and the trial judge erred by allowing a prosecutor to ask leading questions, and by not instructing the jury on the option of finding Merritt guilty of the lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter.
Merritt shot the 44-year-old almost eight hours after Taylor beat him over the head with a metal pipe, splitting his scalp. That assault inside the gas station at 1:45 a.m. was captured on surveillance video, and the store clerk called police because Taylor broke an overhead light as he raised the pipe to hit Merritt.
Merritt at the time was armed with a table leg, but he never got to club Taylor with it before Taylor ran away.
It was not the first time Taylor had beat Merritt, whose sister testified Taylor months earlier had beaten her brother unconscious.
Defense attorney Jennifer Curry argued Merritt developed a “battered person syndrome” akin to victims of repeated family violence, and believed the abuse would escalate.
Georgia law says someone can use deadly force against another if he “reasonably” believes it’s necessary to defend against “such other’s imminent use of unlawful force.”
But Merritt gunned Taylor down shortly after 9 a.m., hours after Taylor hit him with a pipe, and Taylor wasn’t attacking him at the time. Prosecutor Wesley Lambertus told jurors Merritt could not “reasonably” have believed any further aggression was “imminent.”
Merritt was waiting outside by the door of the 538 Fort Benning Road station when a cousin dropped Taylor off there that morning to buy cigarettes. When Merritt pulled out the gun, Taylor turned and ran, circling the station as Merritt chased and shot at him.
A bullet hit Taylor in the back, piercing his lung and heart. When he staggered across Trask Drive and collapsed, Merritt kept pointing the pistol and pulling the trigger, the empty gun only clicking.
After seven hours of deliberation, a jury on Feb. 8 found Merritt guilty of murder, aggravated assault and using a firearm to commit a felony. He faced a sentence of life without parole partly because of his criminal history, having been convicted of robbery by threat and robbery by injury on May 26, 1992, in Bexar County, Texas.
Now 64 years old, Merritt is serving his time at the Hays State Prison in Trion, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections.