Anthony Tyson was sentenced to death by the State of Alabama for two murders during a robbery
According to court documents Anthony Tyson would shoot and kill Derek Cowan and Damien Thompson during a robbery gone bad.
Anthony Tyson would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
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Anthony Tyson is incarcerated at Holman Prison
Anthony Tyson Case
The State’s evidence tended to show that on January 4, 1997, Porter Key, an employee of Henry Trucking Company, was driving on Franklin Road in Macon County when he discovered the body of Derek Cowan in the middle of the road. Key saw a green Acura automobile roll off the road and strike a fence. The car then backed up onto the road and sped off in the direction of Tuskegee. He thought that the driver of this car had been involved in a hit-and-run accident so he followed the car. He was unable to keep up, and he lost the car somewhere in Tuskegee. Cowan had not been the victim of an accident, but had been shot twice in the back of the head. Within minutes after Key discovered Cowan’s body, the body of Damien Thompson was discovered slumped forward in the passenger side of an Acura automobile that was in the bushes at the intersection of Bull Avenue and Anona Street in Tuskegee. Thompson had been shot twice in the head.
Alphonso Cardwell testified that he and Cowan were scheduled to meet for a drug exchange on a dirt road off County Road 36 on January 4, 1997. He testified that as he was driving to the designated location he saw Cowan, Thompson, and a third male, whom he identified at trial as Anthony Tyson, drive by in a green Acura. The Acura was being followed by another vehicle driven by Cornelius Drisker. Cardwell arrived at the location and Cowan and Cardwell made the exchange. Cardwell testified that he gave Cowan $300 in exchange for cocaine. Minutes after the drug exchange, Cowan’s body was discovered. Witnesses testified that one of his pockets was turned inside out. The $300 was missing.
Police connected Tyson to the murders while investigating a shooting in Union Springs that occurred 10 days after the double murder in Macon County. Nicholas Martin testified that Tyson and three other people shot at him from a car as he was walking his dog. He testified that he recognized Tyson and that he went to the police station and signed a warrant for his arrest.1 The gun identified as the gun used in the Union Springs shooting was the murder weapon in the double murder.
Numerous forensic evidence connected Tyson to the double murder. After executing a search warrant on Tyson’s apartment, based on evidence obtained in the investigation of the Union Springs shooting, police recovered a Lorcin chrome .380 pistol and bloodstained Nike brand sneakers. A DNA analysis of the blood on the sneakers revealed that the blood matched Thompson’s blood. Tyson’s fingerprints were also recovered from the green Acura. Spent shell casings recovered from the Acura, near Cowan’s body, and from the Union Springs shooting were identified as having been fired by the same gun, a Lorcin .380, which was identified as being Tyson’s.
Tyson’s defense at trial was that he did not kill Cowan and Thompson. He attempted to connect a third person to the killings-the man who had been seen in a car with the victims earlier on the day of the murders. Tyson attempted to show that this other person could have committed the murders.
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/al-court-of-criminal-appeals/1096229.html
