On November 19, 2005, police in Sierra Vista, Arizona, arrested 43-year-old Nubian Amon-Ra and charged him with aggravated assault for striking 37-year-old Gailland Ballou with a gun.
Amon-Ra, who was charged with two counts of aggravated assault, went to trial in Cochise County Superior Court in June 2006 before Judge Wallace Hoggatt, who heard the evidence without a jury. Ballou testified that Amon-Ra punched him and struck him in the head with a gun.
Hoggatt convicted Amon-Ra of punching Ballou and acquitted Amon-Ra of striking him with a gun. Amon-Ra was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison.
In 2011, a post-conviction petition for a new trial was filed after a witness came forward and said that Ballou admitted that Amon-Ra never attacked him. The witness said that Ballou said he concocted the story of the attack because he believed that Amon-Ra had sex with Ballou’s daughter.
The witness testified at an evidentiary hearing in 2012 and in April 2012, Judge Hoggatt vacated Amon-Ra’s conviction and ordered a new trial. On May 31, 2012, the charge was dismissed. Amon-Ra was convicted in 2013 of a different aggravated assault and sentenced to seven years in prison.
– Maurice Possley
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