WACO, Texas -- It took a McLennan County jury just two hours Friday to acquit Texas country singer-songwriter Billy Joe Shaver of aggravated assault in the 2007 shooting of another man in a bar parking lot.
An unlawful carrying charge remains pending. Judge Matt Johnson set a $7,500 bond on that charge and told Shaver he was free to go.
Earlier Friday, Shaver testified that he acted in self-defense when he shot Billy Coker in the face near Waco on March 31, 2007. But prosecutors maintained that no other witnesses described Coker as violent or mean.
During cross-examination, prosecutor Beth Toben asked Shaver if he was jealous that Coker had been talking with Shaver's ex-wife, Wanda Shaver, in the bar.
I get more women than a passenger train can haul, the defendant replied. I'm not jealous.
He said under questioning by his own attorneys that he felt threatened by a knife Coker displayed and with which he stirred his drink and Shaver's before tapping him on the shirt with it. Under cross-examination, Shaver said Coker eventually called him out to the parking lot at Papa Joe's Texas Saloon in Lorena and that Coker's knife kept him from taking his ex-wife and leaving. All I was paying attention to was that knife and Wanda, he said.
And he testified he wouldn't leave his ex-wife at the bar alone. If I were chicken (expletive) I would have left, he said, but I'm not.
Coker had told authorities that Shaver told him, Where do you want it? before shooting him in the cheek. Friday, however, Shaver testified, I actually asked him, 'Why do you want to do this?' For one reason or another, someone turned it into, 'Where do you want it? '
After the shooting, he said he called friend and fellow Texas singer-songwriter Willie Nelson and asked for his recommendation of an attorney. Then, Shaver said, he left town out of fear of Coker and his family.
In closing arguments, Dick DeGuerin, Shaver's lead attorney, told jurors that his client acted out of fear.
But prosecutors challenged that assertion. Toben told jurors that no other witnesses described Coker as violent or mean.
Shaver, who lives in Waco, rose to country music stardom in the 1970s. Shaver recorded more than 20 albums and wrote Georgia on a Fast Train and I'm Just an Old Chunk of Coal (But I'm Gonna Be a Diamond Someday).
His heartfelt lyrics helped launch country's outlaw movement, which defined the careers of singers like Nelson and the late Waylon Jennings and returned country to its roots.
