John Henry Gammage was convicted by a Laurel jury Thursday morning for aggravated domestic assault. Circuit Judge Dal Williamson then sentenced Gammage to 10 years in prison, with eight to serve and two years of supervised probation. The sentence allowed by state law for aggravated domestic assault ranges from a minimum of two years to a maximum of 20 years. Gammage had no prior felony convictions, and testimony from the witness stand on Wednesday suggested that the incident that sent Gammage to prison was not behavior that he habitually engaged in. Defense attorneys Cruz Gray and Jeff Hall mentioned those things to the judge just minutes before he issued his sentence.
The defense attorneys also appealed to the jurors Thursday morning before they went back to deliberate their verdict.
“It’s the small things embedded in her testimony that we contend make it hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt,” noted Hall to the jury about the testimony of the victim, Charlette Cooley, as he described the level of proof needed to prove his client guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
During his closing statement, Gray raced back over some key data in the case, including testimony that seemed to demonstrate that Cooley tried to restore her relationship with Gammage by staying in contact with his family and the fact that she remained in the house with the defendant for hours on the night of the incident, after their violent encounter. My grandfather use to say that “something in the milk ain’t clean" when things didn't add up, Gray stated.
The fight between Gammage and Cooley took place on December 9, 2017, after she worked a double shift at Masonite. Gammage picked her up from work around 11:00 that night, and they began arguing shortly thereafter, as he accused her of “messing around.” He then insisted that she listen to a recording on a phone that he believed contained a conversation on it between Cooley and another man. Cooley told Gammage that she was tired after working all day and wanted to take a bath and go to bed. He, according to her testimony Wednesday, demanded that she hear the recording. She contended to Gammage the night of the incident that the voice he was hearing on the recording was a TV in the background. He didn’t believe her story and the exchange of words escalated into physical violence. Cooley told the jury that Gammage used a stick to beat her hands and feet and strangled her into submission.
Assistant District Attorney Dennis Bisnette, who prosecuted the case for the State of Mississippi, coalesced evidence from the testimony of Cooley and two law enforcement officers, plus a video and some photos taken at the emergency room of South Central Regional Medical Center the night of the assault, to form the crux of his case.
The State’s evidence, which also showed that Cooley suffered a broken right thumb that caused her to undergo surgery and miss substantial time at work, apparently outweighed in the jury’s collective mind the defense’s documentation that Cooley at one time signed papers to drop the charges against the defendant.
The defense team attempted to show that Cooley’s change of mind to again pursue the charges against Gammage several months later was linked to the possibility of her losing money from the Crime Victim Compensation fund. That fund is overseen by the Attorney General’s Office of Mississippi. Some victims of violent crimes receive compensation from that fund to help pay medical bills and assist with lost wages that result from them being victimized.
Deborah Warren, the victim assistance coordinator for the Jones County District Attorney’s Office, did note in her testimony that “there is a possibility” that the AG’s Office could make a victim repay money if they dropped the charges after receiving compensation. However, Warren also testified that Cooley had already conveyed to her that she wanted to again pursue the charges against Gammage before she (Warren) talked to her about the Crime Victim Compensation benefits.
Bisnette later explained that many victims change their minds about pursuing charges against their assailants, and he labeled all the speech about charges being dropped and then pursued again and possible connections to compensation from the AG’s Office as “defensive distractions.”
The jury deliberated less than an hour before returning the guilty verdict.