The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Breakdown podcast drops a special episode on Friday for Season 5: “The Tex McIver Case.”
McIver, an Atlanta lawyer, was convicted of murder during a trial in Fulton County for killing his wife on Sept. 25, 2016.
The killing happened when Tex and Diane McIver returned home to Atlanta from their 84-acre ranch in Putnam County. Diane McIver’s best friend, Dani Jo Carter, was driving the Ford Expedition. Diane McIver was sitting in the front passenger seat, her husband sitting behind her in the back seat.
After they exited the downtown connector on Edgewood Avenue, Tex McIver asks for his .38-caliber handgun that’s in the center console. He later says he thought they had come upon a Black Lives Matter protest.
They leave the area without incident and drive along Piedmont Avenue toward Buckhead, with McIver still holding the revolver in his lap. When they get to an intersection, McIver fires a bullet through the backseat. It hits his wife in the back and she later dies during surgery at Emory University Hospital.
McIver tells police that it was a tragic accident, that the gun went off after he had fallen asleep and was suddenly awakened. But he is eventually indicted for murder and convicted of it during a 2018 trial.
Returning to Breakdown’s fifth season, Episode 12 follows the McIver case through its appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court which issued its opinion on June 30. Just eight days before, the state high court had reversed another high-profile murder case against Justin Ross Harris who had left his 22-month-old son Cooper in his hot car to die.
This time, the court overturns McIver’s conviction in another momentous decision.
You can download the Breakdown podcast from Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or your favorite podcasting platform. You can also stream it on your computer from ajc.com.
