A Cherokee County jury found a Boaz man guilty in a cattle rustling charge from 2014 – that after a trial during which both the prosecutor and a juror sang on the record.

Michael Chad Stephens, 35 of a Noojin Drive address – was found guilty of Receiving Stolen Property First Degree, in connection with cattle which had been stolen from a pasture close to his home and delivered to a Cherokee County farm.

Witnesses testified that the cattle were worth about $20,000 – but the defendant sold them for half that amount – $10,000.

Deputy District Attorney Scott Lloyd said after the trial “There’s a figure of speech for when property sells so cheap everybody involved knows it’s stolen, and there’s even a song about it.  So, I told the jurors I would sing the first three words of an old George Jones song and let them finish it in their heads.  I sang the first words of the chorus from, “The Corvette Song:” “Oh she was…” and then I stopped to let the jurors sing the rest of it in their heads.  But one juror evidently didn’t hear me say that I wanted them to sing in their heads and he sang back to me out loud, “Hotter than a Two-Dollar Pistol!””

Lloyd went on to say, “This trial was a lot of fun.  We had a good jury who could see through the smokescreens. Investigator Tim Matthews from the State Bureau of Investigation put together a good case for me to present – I told the jurors in the opening statement that they might feel like a jury from the Wild West because what we had for them to hear was ‘an ol’ timey cattle-rustlin’ case.’”

Lloyd added “I’d like to thank District Attorney Mike O’Dell for giving me the opportunity to represent the people of DeKalb & Cherokee counties in this case, and many others, for more than twenty years.”