After stunning courtroom twist, road-rage murder case ends in acquittal

MACON — In a surprising moment of courtroom drama, the brother of a driver accused in the shooting death of another motorist earlier this year took the stand as a witness and testified that, unbeknown to prosecutors and investigators, it was he, not his brother, who fired the fatal shots.

Authorities charged 20-year-old Jordan Lavoris Dean with murder in the death of Nathaniel L. Fuller. But, on the witness stand, 22-year-old Jacorey L. Dean said he killed Fuller and that it was self-defense.

On Friday, two days after that stunning admission, jurors acquitted Jordan Dean of murder and aggravated assault charges.

The shooting happened in the predawn hours of April 10 along a stretch of Eisenhower Parkway, a main thoroughfare across Macon’s south side between I-75 and I-475. Fuller, mortally wounded, crashed into a backyard.

According to prosecutors, Jordan Dean fled, later hid the car he was driving beneath a tarp at a relative’s house and never called the cops to report the incident. The lone charge he was convicted of, misdemeanor tampering with evidence, stemmed from concealing the car. He was sentenced to a year behind bars, six months of which he has already served.

Jordan Dean’s attorneys, who had requested a speedy trial for him, argued from the outset that the shooting was a matter of self-defense.

They said Dean was at the wheel of a 2016 Dodge Challenger, on his way to work at Bass Pro Shops, when 42-year-old Fuller, driving a Chevy Blazer, rammed his car. Dean apparently angered Fuller by pulling too close to his SUV at a stoplight, the attorneys said.

Their version of what may have prompted the 5 a.m. gunfire as the automobiles sped along the roadway was the only presented to jurors.

“There are only three witnesses to the specifics of that interaction,” defense attorney J. Travis Griffin said in his closing argument on Thursday in Bibb County Superior Court. “One of those three, Nathaniel Fuller, is deceased. The other two witnesses are Jordan Dean and Jacorey Dean.”

The defense contended that Fuller aggressively tailed the Dodge for nearly 2 miles before wielding a pistol as he raced alongside the Deans’ car.

“He’s already flashed a gun at them. He’s already chased them down after they thought they’d lost him. And now he’s ramming them and again flashing that gun at them, pointing that gun at them,” Griffin said.

In his summation to the jury, Griffin also highlighted the surprise testimony of Jordan Dean’s brother, Jacorey.

“Jacorey Dean is not lying,” Griffin said. “He’s not. Jacorey is not the one in the hot seat. He hasn’t been charged with a crime. Jacorey knows all too well what could happen to him, admitting involvement in this. Jacorey is a husband. He’s a father. He has a baby on the way. He has people who depend on him. He didn’t take that stand to lie for his brother. He took the stand to do the right thing. Jacorey did what a man should do. He’s not gonna let his brother flap in the wind. He’s taking responsibility for his actions — his justified actions.”

Griffin, in stressing his point, invoked lyrics of a hit tune from the 1990s.

“I have a little brother. … I love my little brother. But it’s like that old Meat Loaf song, ‘I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that.’ I’m not gonna put myself in a murder case that I’m not involved in. … But Jacorey did just that. He didn’t do it out of love. He testified because it was the truth.”

It wasn’t until the elder Dean brother took the stand as a defense witness on Wednesday that prosecutors became aware of his apparent involvement.

Later in the day, while jurors were deliberating, Jacorey Dean, as he waited with family members in the courtroom, was summoned to the bench and arrested. He was jailed on charges of murder and aggravated assault.

Prosecutor Kyle Owenby described the Deans’ account of why Fuller was shot “a convenient fantasy” dreamed up to blame Fuller as the instigator.

Owenby said there was a gun in Fuller’s SUV, but the gun and the car belonged to someone else. The prosecutor also said the gun believed to have fired the shots that killed Fuller, a Draco pistol, has never been recovered and that Jordan Dean had testified he didn’t know what became of it.

“It’s a convenient fantasy to blame all of this on Mr. Fuller. I don’t know what happened,” Owenby said.

As for Jacorey Dean’s testimony, Owenby said, “I’m not gonna call him a liar. But I think he is trying to perpetuate a fraud on you all.”