A Mobile County jury took less than an hour to reject a man’s claim that he wasn’t the one who fired the shots that killed another man during a 2011 drug deal that went wrong.
Fred Bryant, 32, was convicted of murder in the fatal shooting of 27-year-old Vincent Tillman, who died Oct. 29, 2011, after the two men met in the 2000 block of Robinson Drive in Mobile to complete a small marijuana purchase. Bryant is scheduled to be sentenced in January and faces the possibility of life in prison, or life without parole, given his criminal history.
According to testimony during the trial, Bryant’s sister drove him and another man, Addarryn Todd, to a pawn shop parking lot, where Bryant and Todd then walked to meet Tillman and a second man in a nearby grocery store lot. The group decided to complete the drug transaction at a nearby apartment complex, where prosecutors say Bryant pulled a gun, demanded money and shot Tillman multiple times during a struggle. Tillman was struck in the chest, back and hip, with a bullet grazing his hand.
A blue knit cap left at the scene became a key piece of evidence, after a state forensic analyst testified that Bryant was a “potential contributor” to DNA found on the cap. Bryant’s defense attorney, Ashley Cameron, argued during closing statements that the DNA evidence proved only that Bryant had touched the hat at some point, not that he fired the fatal shots, and pointed to two witnesses who could not identify Bryant from a photo lineup.
Cameron also argued that investigators had wrongly focused on Bryant while another man, identified during the investigation after Bryant’s sister said he had access to her vehicle at the time of the shooting, was never charged. Prosecutors countered that the lineup identification was only ever tentative and insufficient to bring charges against that man.
Assistant District Attorney Jo Beth Murphree told jurors during closing arguments that the defense’s theories amounted to an attempt to distract from the evidence presented at trial. After the jury returned its guilty verdict, Bryant appeared emotional in the courtroom, briefly clashing with his attorney over whether he would be allowed to address the court. He ultimately followed her advice and did not speak.
The presiding judge denied a request to allow Bryant to remain free on bond ahead of sentencing, and he was taken into custody following the verdict. Tillman’s death remained one of several unsolved-turned-solved homicide cases tied to small-scale drug transactions that Mobile County prosecutors have pursued to trial in recent years.