Syracuse, NY — A Syracuse man will head back to prison for a possible life sentence after a jury found him guilty again of a 2015 shooting at a high-stakes poker game.
Charquan Edwards, now 29, shot an 83-year-old man while fleeing the Tallman Street residence with $9,000 in wagers laid out on a table, prosecutor Lauren Phelps told the jury.
The victim, George Smith, has since died of unrelated causes, as did three other witnesses present that night. A fifth witness was hospitalized during last week’s retrial in Onondaga County.
But state Supreme Court Justice Gordon Cuffy allowed the jury to hear sworn testimony from the victim and the others by allowing the transcript from the first trial to be read into the record at the second trial. That meant that a large bulk of the recent trial was spent with someone at the witness stand reading from a transcript from Edwards’ 2015 trial.
That 2015 trial also ended with a jury finding Edwards guilty after deliberating only a few hours. The jury in this trial deliberated for several hours Friday and all day Monday before reaching the same verdict.
Defense lawyer Patrick Hennessy argued that Edwards and Smith got into a physical fight over the victim’s gun, and Edwards gained control of the weapon and shot the victim in self-defense.
But the jury believed the prosecution’s theory: that Edwards became angry after a winning streak earlier in the evening went sour and he grabbed the cash and fled, shooting the victim on his way out of the residence.
Edwards’ first conviction was overturned on procedural errors that had little impact on the retrial. He has remained in custody during the retrial process.
On the attempted murder charge, Edwards faces a sentence of up to 25 years to life in prison. That sentence includes the chance of life in prison because the shooting happened during the course of a robbery.
In 2015, Edwards was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison by since retired Judge John Brunetti. The current judge, Cuffy, will get to decide Edwards’ sentence in May.
Staff writer Douglass Dowty can be reached at ddowty@syracuse.com or 315-470-6070.