Chance Loftis walked free from the Hamilton County Jail Monday, nearly three years after he was charged with murder and days after a jury found him guilty on a lesser misdemeanor charge.
Assistant District Attorney General Jason Demastus announced that he would dismiss the remaining burglary charge against Loftis and accept the 27-year-old’s 33 months in prison as time served, since his conviction on a charge of reckless endangerment carries less than a year of prison time.
Loftis was convicted of the misdemeanor charge last Friday. During seven days of testimony that ended last Thursday, Demastus asked a jury to convict him of second-degree murder in the 2012 beating death of Donald Rogers. Demastus said Loftis and Travis Jenkins, 31, beat Rogers bloody during a boating trip on the Tennessee River, then left him in the boat to float away as he died.
Loftis’ attorney, Mary Sullivan Moore, argued that the beating didn’t cause Rogers’ death. An expert witness for the defense testified that the autopsy performed on Rogers was sloppy and that cause of death could not be determined, undermining testimony from a medical examiner who said Rogers died of blunt-force trauma.
The jury also found Loftis not guilty of aggravated cruelty to animals in the killing of Roger’s Yorkie terrier, Braxton.