by Teresa Eubanks, Journal Editor
A Liberty County jury took four hours to deliberate last week before finding 35-year-old Chairty Furr guilty of manslaughter with a firearm in the 2012 shooting death of her boyfriend, Cliff Sloat.
Furr took the stand and testified that she and Sloat had been drinking when he threatened to choke her and started toward her early that September evening. She admitted grabbing her gun and firing at him but said she never intended to harm him. She said she meant to shoot over his head but “missed” and fatally wounded him.
“This was not that complicated a case,” Assistant State Attorney Richard Combs told the jury as he began final arguments.
“This was a case based upon the defendant’s admissions to several of the first responders that she had in fact, shot a firearm at Mr. Sloat,” he said. “This was about a contentious and unstable relationship that ended with an unnecessary death.”
Combs told the jury, “The claim she was making at the time was that ‘I didn’t mean to hit him’. I suggest to you that the evidence is extremely clear that it was not an accident that she pulled the trigger.”
“The fact that she was drunk and didn’t quite hit where she was aiming – which was in the air – doesn’t mean we can just call this an accident and forget about it,” he said.
He urged the jury to convict her of second degree murder, pointing out “The evidence of the prior activity.”
He called Furr’s testimony “a little vague on the details about what happened” and said the physical evidence “was a little bit inconsistent with some of her claims.”
“Basically, you have a 35-year-old woman with no prior violent acts by law enforcement. The boyfriends she had before Cliff had not reported any violence. Now all of a sudden, the state decides to classify her as violent,” defense attorney John Bruhn told the jury.
“When you have a defendant who has no record and no reason to commit murder, the state does what it normally does – they innundate you with evidence.” Bruhn said.
“All that evidence didn’t mean a thing other than something had occurred at Chairty’s home,” he said, accusing the state of taking things out of context to create another version of events.
He said those who testified about the couple’s history of violence “had their own reason to say something like that. This is not reliable testimony.”
Bruhn said Sloat got upset because he thought Furr was cheating on him. “He started yelling at her and threatened to choke her out,” he said. As Sloat started toward her, Furr went for her gun and told him to stop. “He never stopped…so she shoots,” Bruhn said.
He recounted how she called 911 and then went to perform CPR on Sloat.
“The only accident was that she hit him. She shot the gun to stop him. She’s at her own home, her own house. She can’t run – she has a prosthetic leg. It’s self defense,” he said. “She stopped a man she was afraid was going to hurt her.”
He asked the jury, “What if she hadn’t shot him? Maybe she would have been the one in that yard lying dead.”
He concluded, “She did what she had to do to save her own life.”
Furr is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 6 of next year.