Jury convicts Eric McLean of reckless homicide

Knoxville News Sentinel ^ | 9/12/8 | Jamie Satterfield

[SmithL]

After nearly two years of turmoil, Eric McLean finally found peace, but he insists it came days before a jury on Thursday snatched him from a potential prison cell and planted him at the door to probation.

"I've never been to court to know what to expect," the 33-year-old North Knoxville man said. "I was physically ill when this trial started (nine days ago). But once I got to tell my story, once I got to get this off my chest, I felt like a weight had been lifted off my chest."

It was that day when McLean took the witness stand in his own defense that his attorney, Bruce Poston, believes led in large part to Thursday's verdict that found him guilty of reckless homicide.

"Eric has shown this jury who he is," Poston said. "You can't fake that."

Jurors spent 11 hours over two days considering of what McLean was guilty, if anything, in the March 2007 slaying of 18-year-old Sean Powell, who was killed as he sat in his car outside McLean's Coker Avenue house as he waited for his lover, McLean's wife and Powell's former West High School student teacher, to join him.

Prosecutors Bill Crabtree and Takisha Fitzgerald tried to convince jurors McLean was a cold-blooded killer who carried out a plot to gun down his wife's suitor.

Poston launched a bold effort to convince jurors the shooting was an accident, caused when Powell grabbed the barrel of a high-powered rifle McLean shoved into the car in an effort to scare the teenager so he would leave.

...If convicted of first-degree murder, McLean faced a mandatory 51-year prison term. Reckless homicide, on the other hand, carries a penalty range of two to four years. Under the law, he is presumed eligible for probation.

[cherry]

I don’t know how to feel about this......it was a teenager after all....just a teenager....