VALLEY, Ala. (AP) – An Alabama judge dismissed a capital murder charge against a man jailed for nearly six years because authorities failed to turn over key evidence to the defense, but the man will still face prosecution in Georgia.
Chambers County Circuit Judge Steven Perryman ruled Tuesday that the state purposely failed to provide lawyers for Stacey Demar Gray with DNA evidence that supposedly linked him to the death of Renee Eldridge, who was abducted from her home in Columbus, Georgia, in 2015. She was later found dead in a creek in east Alabama.
But Perryman also ordered that Gray remain jailed without bond in Chambers County until he can be sent to Georgia, where he was charged in an alleged sexual assault on Gray that occurred the year before the slaying.
Despite what happened in Alabama, Muscogee County District Attorney Mark Jones told news outlets the man could still be charged with murder in Georgia.
“We are not bound by any ruling of an Alabama court on that sort of evidence,” Jones told WRBL-TV. “We have been in pretty close communication with the victim’s father on the case. So, we are talking pretty much daily about what we can do and what can be done.”