Bailey guilty of murder

PALMER — A day’s worth of deliberations Friday was all it took for a jury to find Phillip Bailey guilty of murder for shooting his neighbor, Dale Prater.

Assistant District Attorney Kerry Corliss said in an email shortly after 4:30 p.m., Friday that Bailey had been found guilty of first-degree murder and that he will receive his sentence in October. First-degree murder carries a potential penalty of 99 years in prison.

Bailey, 38, was arrested Oct. 1, 2011, outside of his apartment on Fanciful Place.

Details of what led to the shooting were sketchy at the time. At trial, two competing narratives emerged.

Corliss argued that Bailey was upset with his neighbor for a host of reasons. He was worried Prater, 42, might try to steal money from him. He thought Prater was unlocking his windows at night. He thought Prater was the reason his wife left him.

So, Corliss argued, while Prater was out of the building buying cigarettes for Bailey, Bailey strapped on his pistol, waited for him to return, told his daughter not to be afraid, then shot Prater in the back of the head.

Prater’s attorneys, Hannah King and Nathaniel Peters, argued that Bailey feared for his life. They pointed to testimony that earlier in the day that showed Prater had been demonstrating how to kill a person with a Bowie knife. He had told Bailey he could stab him without his daughter hearing anything and faster than he could grab his gun.

They also pointed out that Prater had been convicted of murder in Oklahoma, that he’d beaten to death with a tow chain a man who sold him bad methamphetamine then buried him across state lines. That he had bragged about killing a second person while serving his prison term.

Both sides seemed to concede that Prater’s death was unexpected. Prosecutors said Prater didn’t see it coming, that he was ambushed and had no time to defend himself. Defense attorneys, on the other hand, argued Prater and Bailey had been friends and Bailey was surprised when their relationship took such a dark turn and he had to defend himself.

Bailey’s trial was, to say the least, irregular, including stopping at one point for more than a week to seek guidance from higher courts.

King, in her arguments to the jury, explained why that was. Prater’s fiancée, Dawn Syers, brought defense attorneys the Bowie knife Prater was alleged to have been wielding the day of the killing. It was unclear what happened to the knife that day, whether a neighbor grabbed it off of Prater’s body or whether it was even in the apartment by the time he was shot.

Either way, the re-emergence of the knife was an unexpected development in the trial. The evidence was so important to the defense, though, that Superior Court Judge Gregory Heath refused to let the trial move forward unless Syers was given immunity from prosecution so she could be questioned on the witness stand without breaching her constitutional right not to incriminate herself.

The state Supreme Court ruled that Heath was in the right when he insisted on immunity for Syers.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.