COLUMN: Coaching Buzz Overshadows Anniversary Of Fatal Grace Street Shooting

*This is an opinion column*

TUSCALOOSA, AL — Arguably the largest gaggle of sportswriters and television reporters I'd ever seen were crammed into the North Zone at Bryant-Denny Stadium Saturday as Kalen DeBoer was introduced as the next head football coach at the University of Alabama.

And rightfully so.

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Even for someone who has worked in journalism their entire adult life and covered every turbulent chapter of the COVID-19 pandemic, the changing of the guards at the end of the Nick Saban Era is far and away the most culturally significant story of my career to date. At the same time, though, sitting amongst the throng of reporters, I couldn't help but think of the story it had usurped.

Jan. 15 is a date I'll remember for the rest of my life. At 1:45 a.m. that morning — a time I will also never forget — Jamea Harris was shot and killed on Grace Street near the University of Alabama campus.

I still recall so many little, unimportant details from that day — what I was wearing, what I had for lunch, what I watched on TV, the songs I listened to. The next day, I sat quietly at a little desk inside Coleman Coliseum and attended my first, and to this day, only, Alabama men's basketball press conference.

But what sticks with me more than anything is that feeling in the pit of my stomach the moment I saw Michael Lynn Davis and former Alabama basketball player Darius Miles led down the steps at the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's Office after being charged with capital murder for the shooting just hours before.

This column isn't going to rehash my understanding of the minute-by-minute details of the shooting or even offer much in the way of my opinions on the ongoing case, which you can read here. It's a story that was read more than any other story across the Patch brand in 2023 and I personally consider it my most intense piece of reporting to date.

This also won't delve into the ongoing defamation case against the New York Times by the family of Alabama basketball walk-on Kai Spears that resulted from the chaos of that morning.

Rather, the intention here is to highlight the points over the last year where things got weird, intense or downright maddening.

I can close my eyes and still hear Miles sobbing as he trudged down the steps in handcuffs and told his family standing nearby that he loved them. I'm not a big fan of "perp walks" but have attended and covered more of them than I could ever count. Still, I'd never seen someone charged with capital murder squalling as they were led to jail.

It's stuck with me to this very moment because from then on it didn't feel right.

And to this day, I'll never forget Captain Jack Kennedy, the commander of the Tuscaloosa Violent Crimes Unit, standing in the sheriff's office parking lot reading a press release and saying the name "Darius Miles" without mentioning more about him.

I looked around and remember saying "Darius Miles, the basketball player?"

Monday marks one year since that cold morning following an Alabama basketball win over LSU that saw so many lives forever altered by a series of events that lasted roughly seven minutes.

Seven minutes — it's another construct of time that will be with me until I'm dead in the ground.

At present, though, and after writing tens of thousands of words about this case, there's very little more to say right now.

But with the shifting of the narrative once more details surfaced, the inevitable passage of time and the wall-to-wall coverage of the beginning of the DeBoer Era, we've found ourselves in a much different place a year later. Much of the air has gone out of the circus around the case, but I would be doing all of those involved a disservice if I didn't acknowledge its anniversary.

Indeed, the early morning shooting on Grace Street that left a young mother dead instantly became a big regional news story about Miles, who wasn't all that much of a star on the team. It then ballooned into a full-on international controversy once former Tide standout and eventual No. 2 overall pick in the NBA Draft Brandon Miller's name entered the conversation during a preliminary hearing for Miles and Davis in the Tuscaloosa County Jail in February.

The tiny courtroom was standing room only as sportswriters shredded through their notebooks, most of whom were probably covering their very first murder case. As I wrote at the time, the courtroom was a stuffy 74 degrees and, making the mistake of wearing cowboy boots, I had no other recourse than to stand in the aisle with my calves aching for the better part of three hours.

I'll still argue to this day that the killing of Jamea Harris was likely the first act of violence most of these scribes had ever covered apart from big hits and scrapes during a game. I don't say that as an insult, but in considering this as a journalistic case study, it became the first external issue when the story broke, as national outlets especially ran with wholly inaccurate narratives about what happened the morning of Jan. 15.

Baseless storylines like Brandon Miller orchestrated the whole thing or that Darius Miles killed Jamea Harris because she turned down his romantic advances dominated the news cycle and drowned out the little bit of truth that was being reported, mostly from local and statewide outlets.

But we know now just how outrageous such claims were.

Restraint was in short supply, though and even I was skeptical of just how everything was playing out, telling my significant other that if Miles had indeed given Davis his legally owned handgun to his buddy to kill that young woman, then they both deserved to rot in jail. Case closed.

I'm a Tuscaloosa native, an alumnus of the University of Alabama, and a massive sports fan who loves the Crimson Tide. I'm a bonafide fan and not a sports beat writer, but my journalism ethics simply won't let me paper over a crime just because the person who committed it was an athlete for the hometown team.

On the contrary, I've been sharply criticized by some readers just in the last year for reporting on the foibles of other student-athletes.

I'd even go so far as to say most of my colleagues in this business feel the same way and that could be a valid explanation for why there was so little restraint in publicly dragging Miles after his arrest. But as I scanned DeBoer's press conference on Saturday, I figured that so many of these same folks who parachuted into my hometown would let Jan. 15 come and go without penning a single word.

It's old news now, after all, and the slow-moving courtroom odyssey we've found ourselves in is complicated and not very sexy for reporters whose salaries are dependent upon clicks.

Following the preliminary hearing, though, I was left with a bad taste in my mouth and felt there were more questions than answers.

But it was the lack of clarity regarding the step-by-step circumstances of the shooting that began to keep me up at night wondering if we in the media got it all wrong.

At this point, the death penalty was still very much on the table and the stakes were far too high to not begin questioning things once there was a shred of doubt.

So I started digging and working every single source I could think of in what felt at first like a Quixotic quest leading nowhere other than me having wasted my time.

Persistence paid off, though, and I was allowed to watch a great deal of video evidence from that morning, along with independently obtaining incredibly dense transcripts that helped add clarity to courtroom proceedings where reporters remain barred from using recording devices of any kind.

My life hasn't been the same since. This is also where my big initial question was shattered into a thousand little pieces and I've been trying to piece it all together ever since.

Rock on a few months later, though, and the skin had been all but gnawed off my bones with multiple radio or television interviews a day to discuss the story while still having an entire community to cover. I was tired of all of it — tired of being baited into criticizing pundits and other reporters and to this day lament the airtime wasted that could have been used to discuss the much more important details of the case.

After Miles was denied bond in February, though, I was a bit dejected and ready to walk away from the whole thing because I knew we were digging in for the long haul. There would be no triumphant release for anybody from the Tuscaloosa County Jail without a jury trial.

My energy for the case was reinvigorated, though, as winter gave way to spring and I sat at a poolside table outside of the Homewood Suites by Hilton in downtown Tuscaloosa with close to a dozen of Miles' family members in late May. We talked at length about the case and they didn't so much call for Miles to be exonerated on the spot but expressed the pain felt by the misinformed public criticism of the former Tide basketball forward.

The barb that cut the deepest, they said, came from popular shock jock Charlamagne tha God on his syndicated radio show "The Breakfast Club," which featured Miles as its "Donkey of the Day."

They even expressed disgust and embarrassment at the fact that so much of the narrative focused on Miles and how little premium was given to demanding justice for Jamea Harris. All they wanted in that moment was justice for all involved and I honestly squalled like a child on the drive home when I truly realized the scope of the pain being felt by so many, well beyond the nice folks I had just met with. By that point, as I sobbed driving over the bridge back to Northport, the story had become more human than anything I had ever encountered and forever altered how I viewed my profession.

My informed opinion of the case had shifted dramatically, sure, but I was hit with a much bigger realization after that meeting that scares me to this very moment. It makes me rethink my approach to reporting on violent crimes and I try every day not to dwell on how many other questionable cases like this may have come and gone without fanfare or journalistic prying because they weren't college or professional athletes.

Even in the legal proceedings following the death of Jamea Harris, this sentiment manifested itself in the form of an empty courtroom on Dec. 12, 2023, as Michael Lynn Davis had his court date for his request for dismissal on the grounds of self-defense.

It's been widely reported that Davis was shot twice during the fatal shooting that killed Jamea Harris and the man who shot him — her boyfriend and the father of her child, Cedric Johnson — was never charged and has become an enigmatic figure in the case.

ABC 33/40 News reporter Mary Barron can confirm that we were the only media in the courtroom that day and, honestly, the only people in the audience other than the defendant's parents.

The roughly three-minute hearing that day was fairly inconsequential, but I was struck by the contrasts in the case against Miles. Despite being the suspect accused of firing the fatal shot that killed Harris, her family was noticeably absent as Davis sat at the defense table, but seemed to have been in attendance for any hearing for Miles and having an ongoing wrong death civil suit against the two suspects ... and Charlotte Hornet Brandon Miller.

For Miles, though, the crowd is sure to have diminished further when he has his next court appearance before Circuit Court Judge Daniel Pruet on Feb. 22. When his case first entered the courtroom, some Alabama basketball players showed up in quiet support of their former teammate and some staffers could be seen in the courtroom.

Most of those players are gone now, though, and the crowds are sure to get smaller and more personal as the case enters its second year.

The hearing in February will see the Turner Law Group make a second attempt at convincing Pruet to grant Miles a bond, while also making the case for suppressing statements Miles gave investigators before being read his Miranda rights on the morning of Jan. 15.

“We are seeking a bond again because, as the evidence has made clear, Darius Miles deserves a chance to make a bond and return to his family while he awaits his day in court," defense attorney Mary Turner told Patch in October. "These are obviously tragic circumstances for all involved, but a bond is not an unreasonable request in a case with facts such as these.”

ALSO READ: Court Transcripts Bring Self-Defense Case For Darius Miles Into Focus

And sure, there's always the possibility of some bombshell piece of evidence coming to light, such as the revelation offered by District Attorney Hays Webb during a hearing in October that Davis put on a different coat and donned a gaiter or "non-medical" scarf in the moments before the shooting.

The only thing that can be certain at this point, though, is that we have one hell of a long way to go.

I'm not here to say who is innocent or guilty, I'm merely sitting in the grandstands with a scorebook. But I still have a bunch of questions — questions that normally aren't asked a year removed from someone getting murdered in Tuscaloosa.

Ryan Phillips is an award-winning journalist, editor and opinion columnist. He is also the founder and field editor of Tuscaloosa Patch. The opinions expressed in this column are in no way a reflection of our parent company or sponsors. Email news tips to ryan.phillips@patch.com.