MOUNT VERNON – Madison County jurors correctly convicted Brady Witcher of triple murder, Fifth District appellate judges ruled on July 27.
They affirmed Circuit Judge Kyle Napp, who entered judgment on the verdict last year.
Jurors found Witcher murdered Shari Yates, age 59, son Andrew Brooks, age 30, and John McMillian, age 32, at Yates’s home in Bethalto in 2019.
Witcher argued on appeal that Napp shouldn’t have allowed evidence about violent crimes he committed in Tennessee a day before the murders.
Fifth District justices Michael McHaney, Thomas Welch, and Barry Vaughan disagreed.
McHaney wrote, “There is no doubt that the other crimes evidence presented to the jury was prejudicial to the defendant, but the trial court was required to determine whether its prejudicial impact outweighed its probative value.”
“We find that the trial court carefully analyzed the probative value of the other crimes evidence, and it specifically considered the risk of unfair prejudice,” he added.
Madison County State's Attorney Tom Haine said he appreciates everyone who worked tirelessly in prosecuting the case.
“We appreciate the Appellate Prosecutor’s work in defending this case on appeal, and are glad the Appellate Court has upheld this dangerous murder’s conviction in this violent, multi-state crime spree,” Haine said. “Madison County’s prosecutors on this case, Assistant State’s Attorney Lauren Maricle and Assistant State’s Attorney Morgan Hudson, presented evidence and testimony that gave jurors a complete picture of this killer’s destructive, murderous path. The evidence developed by investigators was exhaustive, crossing state lines and pointing precisely to this ruthless killer.”
Witcher lived in Alabama and contacted Kellie Hughes and Jessica Graves to deal narcotics.
On Dec. 13, 2019, he murdered Hughes and pistol whipped Graves.
He tortured her, tied her hands behind her back, and put her in a closet.
When Witcher and girlfriend Brittany McMillan left, Graves managed to call 911.
She led police to Hughes’s body in a wooded area.
Then on Dec. 18, 2019, Witcher and McMillan entered the home of Diego and Taolima Padron in Clarksville, Tennessee.
Witcher hit Diego in the head and back and slashed him with a kitchen knife.
Diego grabbed his gun, and Witcher fired but missed.
Witcher tied the couple’s hands behind their backs and put them in a closet.
He and McMillan loaded their Sierra GMC truck with their possessions and drove away.
It took Diego and Padron ten hours to loosen their ties enough to call police.
Officers found the casing of the shell from the bullet that missed Diego.
Witcher and McMillan drove the Sierra from Clarksville to Yates's home, where McMillan had once stayed for three weeks.
Alabama detectives traced Witcher and McMillan to a motel in Hazelwood, Missouri, where local officers arrested them that night.
Officers opened a Ford Fusion and found McMillan’s jeans with blood on them, a key fob for a Sierra, an Illinois plate, and a glove.
The plate belonged to Yates, so they called Bethalto and requested a welfare check.
Officers knocked at 11 p.m. No no one answered, so they entered and found three dead.
Police found the Sierra in a downtown parking garage the next day with blood inside and out.
In it they found the other glove.
Video showed the Sierra and the Fusion arrived together the previous morning, and the Fusion left ten minutes later.
Grand jurors indicted Witcher and McMillan for murder in the first degree and armed robbery.
Napp set separate trials.
McMillan agreed to plead guilty in 2021, and Napp sentenced her to 15 years.
For Witcher’s trial, his counsel Steve Griffin moved to exclude evidence of the crimes in Alabama and Tennessee.
Napp ruled that Graves could testify but not about Hughes’s murder, because the prejudicial effect would outweigh the probative value.
She ruled Graves could say that she knew Witcher and McMillan, that she saw them with guns, and that she could identify a gun from the motel as the one she saw in Alabama.
Napp ruled she wouldn’t allow evidence of a criminal enterprise in Alabama.
She said she’d allow all the Tennessee evidence, finding it went to identification and motive.
“It goes to the common scheme that is going on with them fleeing from Tennessee and trying to get away and why they need a different car,” she wrote.
“It ties up the gun to both incidents,” she added.
At trial, she instructed jurors that they could consider evidence of other crimes only for intent, motive, and knowledge.
Jurors heard that shell casings from Yates’s home matched the casing from Tennessee.
They heard that bullets from all three autopsies were fired from Witcher’s gun.
They watched a neighbor’s surveillance video of the Sierra on Yates’s street.
They also watched the Fusion and the Sierra entering the parking garage and the Fusion leaving.
In closing argument, Griffin claimed the state brought insufficient evidence and McMillan might have committed the murders.
Jurors found Witcher guilty and Napp imposed three concurrent sentences of 35 years, plus 30 consecutive years for armed robbery.
Witcher appealed, calling evidence of other crimes excessive and highly prejudicial.
Justice McHaney wrote that crimes not related to those in an indictment generally can’t be introduced to show a propensity to commit crimes.
He wrote that an exception applies where other crimes show intent, knowledge, identity, or motive, or where they establish any question other than propensity.
He wrote that Napp allowed other crimes in support of a theory that Witcher and McMillan needed a different vehicle to elude police.
“The evidence concerning the home invasion in Tennessee was relevant to specifically connect the defendant to the gun that was used in the Illinois murders and to explain whose blood was found at the end of the barrel since it did not belong to the victims,” he wrote.
“Without it, the police in Illinois would have had no reason to conduct a wellness check at the Yates residence in Bethalto where the victims’ bodies were found,” he added.
State’s attorney Tom Haine released a statement that prosecutors Lauren Maricle and Morgan Hudson gave jurors a complete picture of a killer’s path.