MOBILE, Ala. — Deangelo Merrill will spend the rest of his life in prison for the 2021 killing of James Jones, a retired veteran who had nothing to do with the grievance that brought an armed man to his door. A Mobile County judge imposed a sentence of life without parole Wednesday afternoon, Mobile County District Attorney Keith Blackwood announced.
Judge Brooks sentenced Merrill on three counts. He received life in prison for reckless manslaughter, life without the possibility of parole for first-degree burglary, and life in prison on a count of certain persons forbidden to possess a pistol.
A Mobile County jury convicted Merrill on June 10, 2026, nearly five years after the killing. Evidence presented at trial showed that on June 29, 2021, Merrill kicked in the door of Jones’ home and fatally shot him.
The Wrong House
What made the case so stark, prosecutors said, was that Jones was not the man Merrill was looking for.
Merrill was seeking Henry Stephenson, whom he blamed for the earlier death of Breonte Coleman. Acting out of retaliation, according to the evidence at trial, Merrill went to the wrong residence and forced his way into the home of Jones, who had no involvement in Coleman’s death.
The district attorney’s announcement did not say whether anyone was ever charged in connection with Coleman’s death, and it does not indicate that Stephenson faced any charge related to it. What it establishes is what the jury found: that Merrill armed himself, broke into a dwelling, and killed the man he found inside — a man who was a stranger to the dispute that motivated him.
‘A Just Sentence,’ District Attorney Says
Blackwood framed the sentence as a proportionate answer to a killing driven by revenge.
“This is a just sentence for a man whose deliberate pursuit of revenge took the life of a completely innocent person,” said District Attorney Keith Blackwood. “Deangelo Merrill armed himself, forced his way into a home where he had no right to be, and killed James Jones—a man who was not even the person he was looking for. Mr. Jones should still be alive. This sentence ensures Merrill will never again be free to bring this kind of violence into our community.”
The State was represented at trial by Assistant District Attorneys Coy Morgan and Danni Ferris, with Victim Services Officer Leigha Arthur assigned to the case. Victim services officers in Alabama district attorneys’ offices work directly with victims and surviving family members, guiding them through court dates, explaining procedure, helping with restitution and victim-compensation paperwork, and making sure families are notified before hearings — the part of a prosecution that rarely appears in a verdict form but shapes the experience of everyone left behind.
What Life Without Parole Means in Alabama
The three sentences Merrill received are not interchangeable, and the distinction between them is the most consequential part of the outcome.
A sentence of life in prison in Alabama leaves open, at least in theory, the possibility that the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles could one day consider the inmate for release. Whether that consideration ever comes, and whether it results in anything, depends on eligibility rules, the board’s discretion and the facts of the case. It is a possibility, not a promise.
A sentence of life without the possibility of parole removes the parole board from the equation entirely. There is no eligibility date, no periodic review, no hearing at which the inmate can make a case for release. Barring a successful appeal or post-conviction challenge that overturns the conviction or the sentence, or an act of executive clemency — which is rare in Alabama and rarer still in violent-crime cases — the sentence means exactly what it says.
That is why the burglary count is the one that governs Merrill’s future. He received life without parole on that charge, and it is the sentence that determines he will not leave prison.
Reckless Manslaughter, Explained
Merrill was convicted of reckless manslaughter for the death of Jones, not murder. The distinction is one of mental state, and it is worth understanding because it often surprises readers who assume the label attached to a homicide reflects how serious it was.
Under Alabama law, a person commits manslaughter when he recklessly causes the death of another person. Recklessness means the person was aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that death would result and consciously disregarded that risk — a real awareness of danger, followed by a decision to proceed anyway. Murder, by contrast, generally requires an intent to cause death, or conduct evincing extreme indifference to human life under circumstances the law treats as the equivalent of intent.
Reckless manslaughter is a Class B felony in Alabama, a lesser offense than murder. It is also a lesser-included offense of murder, which means a jury presented with a murder charge may return a manslaughter verdict instead if it concludes the state proved a reckless killing but not an intentional one. The district attorney’s announcement did not detail what counts were originally charged or how the jury reached its verdicts.
Whatever the reasoning behind the manslaughter verdict, it did not soften the outcome. The burglary conviction carried the heavier sentence.
First-Degree Burglary and Why It Carried the Heaviest Term
First-degree burglary is a Class A felony in Alabama — the state’s most serious category of non-capital offense. In broad terms, the charge applies when a person unlawfully enters or remains in a dwelling with intent to commit a crime inside, and is armed with a deadly weapon, uses or threatens a dangerous instrument, or causes physical injury to someone in the process.
The reasoning behind treating it so severely is straightforward. Alabama law draws a sharp line around the home. A burglary of an occupied dwelling by an armed intruder is treated as categorically more dangerous than other property crimes because of what tends to happen when an armed person forces entry into a place where someone lives. In this case, according to the evidence at trial, exactly that happened: Merrill kicked in a door and shot the man inside.
The standard sentencing range for a Class A felony in Alabama runs from 10 years to 99 years or life. Life without parole sits beyond that ordinary range, and Alabama has mechanisms that make it available in non-capital cases — most notably the Habitual Felony Offender Act, which substantially increases sentencing exposure for defendants with prior felony convictions. The district attorney’s announcement did not explain how the court arrived at each of the three terms, and it did not state whether the sentences run concurrently or consecutively. In practical terms, with a life-without-parole term on one count, that distinction has little effect on when Merrill is released, because he will not be.
The Firearm Count
The third conviction, certain persons forbidden to possess a pistol, is Alabama’s prohibition on pistol possession by people the Legislature has determined should not have one — a category that includes those with prior convictions for crimes of violence. It is charged separately from whatever the person is accused of doing with the weapon, and it exists precisely so that unlawful possession is punishable on its own terms.
Merrill received a life sentence on that count as well.
Five Years From Killing to Sentencing
James Jones was killed on June 29, 2021. The jury returned its verdicts on June 10, 2026, and sentencing followed in September 2026 — a span of more than five years between the crime and its final disposition in the trial court.
Long intervals of that kind are not unusual in Alabama felony cases, particularly serious violent cases that go to trial rather than resolving by plea. Investigation, indictment, discovery, forensic testing, defense motions, court scheduling and, in cases from this period, the residual effects of pandemic-era court closures all contribute. The announcement from the district attorney’s office did not address the reasons for the timeline in this case.
For families, that interval is often the hardest part of the process. It means years of continuances and court dates before any resolution, which is a substantial portion of why victim services staff are assigned to cases at all.
What Comes Next
A sentencing hearing is the end of the trial court’s work, but it is not necessarily the end of the case. Alabama defendants convicted of felonies have the right to appeal, and appeals in felony cases go to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. That court reviews the trial record for legal error — questions about evidentiary rulings, jury instructions, the sufficiency of the evidence and the legality of the sentence — rather than reweighing the facts or substituting its judgment for the jury’s.
If that court affirms, a defendant may seek review in the Alabama Supreme Court, and separately may later file a post-conviction petition raising claims, such as ineffective assistance of counsel, that could not have been raised on direct appeal. Those proceedings can take years, and the overwhelming majority of convictions are affirmed. No appeal had been announced at the time of the district attorney’s release.
For now, the outcome stands as Blackwood described it: a conviction for forcing entry into the wrong house in pursuit of revenge, and a sentence that ensures Merrill will not be released. James Jones, a retired veteran who had no connection to the dispute that brought Merrill to his door, was killed in the one place a person is entitled to feel safest.
Case updates, including any appeal filed on Merrill’s behalf, would move through the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. South Alabama News will report further developments as they occur.