Jurors in an Edgewood man?s murder trial, asked to carefully consider whether the shooting of a community activist?s son was self-defense, failed to reach a verdict Wednesday night.
Sean Nelson Smith is charged with the Aug. 11 fatal shooting of 25-year-old Samuel Horne outside a Brookside Drive town house.
Horne was the son of Mildred Samy, an anti-violence advocate. She turned and wept during closing arguments Wednesday, particularly when prosecutor H. Scott Lewis used morgue photos of Horne to show where four bullets pierced his arms, leg and torso.
Smith had shot Horne in self-defense, said John Janowich, assistant public defender, because Horne had threatened him the night before and immediately preceding the shooting. Horne, Janowich said, had allegedly shot and paralyzed a friend of Smith?s more than a year earlier and had a reputation among his friends as a bully and “stickup kid.”
“Did you hear one piece of evidence to counter his reputation? You did not. The state even called his own sister, and she did not counter it,” Janowich said in his closing arguments.
“Anyone who knew my son would tell you that he was not a violent man and was loved by many,” Samy told The Examiner. “A mother told me today in court that I should be proud of my son because he was always respectful of his elders and loved children.”
Lewis insisted that Smith did not meet all the legal criteria for a self-defense case. Smith did not have fear of being harmed and was not in immediate danger, Lewis said.
“When they all came out of the house, they could have gone left, right or straight. They went left, toward Sam Horne,” Lewis said. “Nothing prevented his escape that day. He made the decision to stand there, to stand his ground and kill Sam Horne.”
Lewis also argued that police and witnesses said Horne appeared to be unarmed, though Janowich said that in the two minutes between the shooting and deputies? arrival it appeared Horne?s
clothes had been rifled through and a gun could have been taken from him.
