PONTIAC ? Despite the defense attorney’s best efforts to convince the jury that Phillip Brown killed 36-year-old Randy Pardy, of Leonard, in self-defense on April 3, 2002, the 24-year-old Oxford resident was convicted Monday of first-degree murder.
The jury also found Brown guilty of a felonious assault charge involving his roommate, Brian Weigold.
Brown will be sentenced Tuesday, Feb. 25.
First-degree murder carries with it a mandatory life prison term without parole.
The trial, which began Feb. 3 in Oakland County Circuit Court before Judge Steven Andrews, featured two distinct versions of the events on April 3, 2002 that led to Pardy’s slaying.
Oakland County Assistant Prosecutor Marc Barron argued Pardy’s killing was a premeditated murder perpetrated by Brown.
Pardy came to Brown’s 591 Lakeville Road apartment that day to pay roommate Weigold $200 for some truck repair work he’d performed, Baron said.
The victim, who had been friends with both Brown and Weigold, was greeted at the door by Weigold, according to testimony.
According to the prosecutor, Brown left his bedroom, walked into the living room and told Pardy, “Why don’t you knock like a normal (expletive) person?”
Pardy responded with a vulgar and sarcastic remark, then went into Weigold’s bedroom to pay him the money, according to the prosecutor.
While Pardy was in the bedroom with Weigold, the prosecutor said Brown went into the utility room to put on his trigger release and load his compound bow with an arrow tipped with a broad-head.
“He waited for his prey,” Barron told the jury.
The prosecutor argued that the trigger release, which Weigold testified to seeing in Brown’s hand, is an indication of premeditation because it “takes a while to put on.”
A trigger release is a mechanical aid used to shoot an arrow from a bow. One end of it is strapped to the shooter’s hand while the other, a clamp-like device, holds on to the bow string. When the shooter is ready to fire the arrow, he or she pulls a trigger, just like a gun, which releases the bow string and fires the arrow.
When Brown took the stand Thursday, Barron instructed the defendant to put the trigger release on to show the jury how long it takes.
As Pardy exited Weigold’s bedroom, the prosecutor said Brown, who was waiting in the utility room, fired the arrow which penetrated the back of the victim’s right elbow, exited the front of his right forearm and reentered the right-side of his abdomen, without penetrating any major organs, where it became lodged.
The arrow’s trajectory and Pardy’s entry wounds indicated the victim was “shot from behind or while turning” showing premeditation, according to the prosecutor.
Baron said Brown then ran over and stabbed Pardy in his left side with a sheath knife while the victim was in the kitchen up against a wall “weaponless” and “helpless,” with his arm pinned against him.
The prosecutor argued Brown had the sheath knife with him in the utility room and cited police finding the empty sheath on the floor as proof. Barron argued that Brown’s gathering of two weapons to use against Pardy was further evidence of premeditation.
The first stab Pardy endured, in his left side, was not the fatal wound.
Pardy then “ran for his life” and barricaded himself in the bathroom by wedging his feet against the bottom of the door while laying on the ground, Barron said.
After hearing Pardy exclaim, “Oh my God, I’ve been shot!”, Weigold exited his bedroom and saw Brown with a knife.
Weigold testified Brown swung at him with the knife, but missed.
This incident lead to the felonious assault charge against Brown.
Weigold then ran out the back door of the apartment and called 9-1-1 on his cell phone while outside.
The prosecutor said Brown then “hunted (Pardy) down”, “smashed” the bathroom door into two pieces and “rammed” the knife into the victim’s heart while he was laying on the floor on his back, leaving him to “drown” in his own blood.
Brown then dumped the knife into the bathroom trash can, where it was later found by police.
The prosecutor pointed out that once Pardy was in the bathroom with the door shut, Brown could have walked out the apartment door, but he didn’t because he was “on the attack.”
Brown then “tried to cover up” his crime by gathering up the items he used to commit the crime ? the bow, quiver with arrows, the trigger release and a broken piece of the arrow that had been lodged in Pardy ? and throwing them over a fence in the backyard, Baron said.
With $1,500 cash on him, Brown then fled the scene in his 1999 Chrysler Sebring. However, just before leaving, he told Weigold, who was outside, to “Keep your (expletive) mouth shut!.”
Brown fled all the way to Georgia, where he voluntarily surrendered himself approximately 24 hours after the crime.
Along the way, the prosecutor noted that he stopped at an Old Navy in Montgomery, Alabama where credit card records show he purchased some shirts and pants to replace the ones he was wearing, which were stained with Pardy’s blood.
Brown testified that he didn’t remember where he got rid of the clothes he was wearing the night of the killing.
The prosecutor played a recording of the 9-1-1 call Weigold made the night of the murder.
On the tape, Weigold told the police dispatcher that Brown had shot Pardy with a bow and arrow, then dropped the bow and “went after (Pardy)” with a knife.
Weigold told the dispatcher that just before Brown left the scene he “told me to shut my mouth and not say a (expletive) word.”
After Brown left, Weigold was instructed to go back inside the apartment to check on Pardy.
When Weigold asks Pardy, “Were you stabbed?”, the jury heard the victim reply on the tape, “Yeah.”
Weigold then tells the dispatcher Pardy’s “eyes are rolling back” and his “fingers are twitching.”
While the tape was playing, many of Pardy’s family members in the courtroom began crying.
The prosecutor told the jury that premeditated murder can happen in a “matter of seconds” and does not have to be the result of an “elaborate plan.”
Barron said Brown had “plenty of seconds.”
In stark contrast to the prosecutor’s argument for premeditated murder, defense attorney Herb Larson told the jury their verdict should be a “flat-out, not guilty, self-defense.”
Larson argued that Brown’s version of the incident “made total sense” and was “very logical.”
According to Brown’s testimony, Pardy entered the apartment without knocking and was not greeted at the door by Weigold. Brown testified he walked to the living room after hearing the door slam because he knew it was Pardy. “No one else came in that way,” the defendant said.
Brown said he asked the victim, “Why don’t you knock like a normal person?”
Brown testified that he did not curse at the victim in the above statement and said that Pardy had a history of repeatedly entering his apartment unannounced and unexpectedly.
“It really bothered me,” Brown said.
However, in the prosecutor’s cross-examination, Brown admitted that he “usually kept the door unlocked during the day” and locked it before he went to bed.
Brown testified that in response to his question, Pardy made a vulgar and sarcastic remark, pushed him into a chair in the living room and went into Weigold’s room. He said he heard Weigold laughing at the incident from his bedroom.
“I was mad,” Brown said, adding that he returned to his bedroom.
A little later, on his way back from the kitchen, Brown testified that Pardy got up from Weigold’s bed, gave him a “dirty look” and approached him.
Brown said he told Pardy, “This stuff has got to stop.”
The two men then exchanged vulgar remarks.
“I was not calm at all,” Brown said, adding he was “fairly heated.”
Brown said Pardy then grabbed his (Brown’s) sheath knife (without the sheath on it) off the bookcase and pointed it at him as the two men were “face-to-face.”
Brown testified that Weigold had offered to sharpen his sheath knife a few days prior to the incident and that Weigold had not returned it to him on April 3, 2002. “(Weigold) still had the knife,” Brown said.
Brown said the knife was “stuck” in the bookcase and he did not remove it. Brown said the next time he saw his knife was when Pardy picked it up.
Describing Pardy’s face as “red,” Brown said he felt “scared” and “terrified.”
“I thought he was going to kill me,” the defendant said.
Brown testified that he ran into the utility room and thought about grabbing one of his golf clubs to defend himself, but instead grabbed his bow, which was hanging on a nail, and loaded it with an arrow.
Brown also denied putting on and using the trigger release and claimed it was hanging on the nail during the whole ordeal.
Brown said Pardy then entered the utility room carrying the knife and “squared off” with him, when the victim saw the bow, “turned” and “flinched,” at which point he fired the arrow in the “direction of the knife.”
“I thought he was coming straight for me,” Brown said.
The arrow struck Pardy in the same manner as described above and Brown said the knife fell to the ground and “bounced” 10-12 inches away from Pardy’s feet. Brown said he dropped the bow at the same time.
Brown said Pardy started to bend over and reach for the knife with his left hand, when he grabbed it and stabbed Pardy in the chest (delivering the fatal blow to the heart) in an upward motion.
Brown testified he then stabbed Pardy a second time in the left side.
“I was doing what I had to do at that point,” Brown stated. “I’m scared.”
Pardy exclaimed, “Oh my God, I’ve been shot!” and fled to the bathroom, Brown said.
Weigold appeared in the living room and started coming toward the utility room, the defendant said.
Brown said Weigold grabbed his arm and said something which he can’t remember. Brown said he “jerked” his arm “away” trying to “break free,” but denied trying to stab Weigold .
Weigold then ran out the back door, Brown said.
Brown described his state of mind at this point as “kind of in a frenzy” and “kind of dazed.” He said he was “operating on 100 percent emotion.”
He said he decided to go after Pardy, which led him to the bathroom. Brown testified that he had “no rational explanation” for following Pardy.
With the bathroom door shut and “something against the bottom corner of the door” preventing it from being opened, Brown said he pushed on it and kicked it twice when all of the sudden the “whole top (part of the door) swung open.”
Once the door was open, Brown said he saw Pardy laying on the floor and “didn’t know what to do.”
“I thought, ‘I’ve got to help him,'” Brown said as he began to cry on the stand. He denied stabbing Pardy in the bathroom. “I wanted to try to help him.”
Brown said he panicked and tried to pull the arrow out of Pardy, but it broke.
Brown said he went outside to try to get Weigold to come back in and help him, but he wouldn’t.
Brown said he then grabbed his bow, quiver and the broken arrow, threw it all over the fence outside, got in his car and drove through the night.
“It happened so fast it didn’t seem like I was driving for that long,” Brown said.
With regard to Pardy’s death, Brown said, “I feel bad. . . I wish none of this ever happened. I’m sad because I don’t want anyone to die for any reason.”
Defense attorney Larson said the prosecution’s assertion that Brown used the trigger release is a “sham.”
Larson noted that laboratory analysis concluded there was “no blood found” on the trigger release indicating it “wasn’t used.”
He said the prosecution’s assertion that Brown cleaned the trigger release was wrong.
“He didn’t clean it at all,” the defense attorney said.
Larson noted the lab report stated bow, quiver and arrows all had blood on them.
With regard to Weigold’s testimony that he saw Brown wearing the trigger release, Larson suggested the roommate was lying for the prosecution because he’s “feeling guilty” that he didn’t try to prevent any of this from happening, “because he could have done more.”
Instead, “the little weenie (Weigold) ran out of there,” Larson told the jury.
Larson also argued that it makes more sense that Pardy received his fatal stab wound to the heart in the utility room and went in the bathroom to lay down because he was dieing.
The angle of the fatal stab wound to the heart indicated it was thrust upward while Pardy was bending over, as in Brown’s story, not downward as Pardy was laying the bathroom floor, as the prosecution claimed, Larson said.
He said it makes no sense that Pardy would receive two “superficial” wounds, referring to the arrow and stab in the left side, and then flee to the bathroom and lay down as the prosecution claimed.
Larson said Pardy’s feet were against the door not because he was barricading himself inside, but because he was a tall man (6-foot, 1-inch) laying down in a small bathroom (5-foot, 4-inch) while dieing.
As for Brown breaking down the bathroom door, Larson said it was a flimsy door which didn’t require much force to break it.
“You don’t need a bulldozer” to break down that type of door, he told the jury.
Larson argued Pardy’s death was self-defense and not premeditated murder because if the latter was true why would Brown kill the victim in his apartment; why would he use a bow and not a gun; and why would he kill Pardy if there was a witness there who knew the defendant?
Larson said if it was a planned killing, Brown would have made a plan, made sure there were no witnesses and gotten rid of the evidence.
In a planned killing, Larson said you don’t throw the evidence in your backyard.
“Even the most podunk police department in the world” is going to find the evidence in the backyard, he said.
If the killing was planned, why didn’t Brown clean the blood off the bow, the arrows and the quiver, Larson asked the jury. Why would he just clean it off the trigger release, he added, stating again that it wasn’t used.
Larson said the self-defense argument makes sense with regard to what Brown did with the evidence because it indicated he wasn’t thinking clearly, he was “scared to death” and in a “state of shock.”
“He doesn’t know it’s self-defense, all he knows is he killed a guy,” Larson said.
In response to the self-defense argument and Brown’s story, the prosecutor noted that “not one drop of blood” or any signs of struggle were found in the “whole utility room.”
The lab report also indicated that “none of the victim’s finger prints” were found on the knife, the prosecutor said.
The prosecutor also noted that Weigold testified he’d heard no argument or exchange of words or sounds of struggle prior to Pardy saying, “Oh my God, I’ve been shot!”
The prosecutor said that if Pardy had the knife and was threatening the defendant, Brown had the choice of running out the back door, but instead he “trapped” himself in the utility room near the back door, which was a “dead-end room.”
When Barron asked Brown why he went into the utility room instead of running out the back door, the defendant replied, “Something inside of me said fight, fight back.”
“I was not considering options at that point,” Brown said. “I was just reacting to the situation.”
During his testimony, Brown repeatedly said “It happened that fast,” as he snapped his fingers.
Barron pointed out that Brown had the options of grabbing a golf club or a shovel (which were also in the utility room) to defend himself, but instead chose the bow and arrow.
When asked why he didn’t grab either the golf club or shovel, Brown said he didn’t have an answer.
When the prosecutor asked Brown why he went after Pardy after he stabbed him, Brown replied, “I had no reason. I don’t know. At that point, my state of mind was messed up. I was in a frenzy. I was excited. I didn’t consider any alternatives, I just followed after him.”
When asked why he still had the knife with him, when he followed Pardy to and inside the bathroom, Brown said, “I have no answer for that.”
Barron also noted that despite Brown’s claim that he wanted to help Pardy, the defendant never made any effort to contact the police, emergency medical personnel, or anyone else to tell them what happened or ask them to come to the victim’s aid, even though he had ample opportunity and time.

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