Ever since their arrest in April 2022 on first-degree murder charges, Jaytron Scott and Calvin Nichols have maintained their innocence. It took more than two years, but authorities in Waco, Texas have now concluded that the pair shouldn't be charged or face trial in the death of Joseph Craig Thomas. Now the question is what took prosecutors so long to reach that conclusion, when even police believed that Thomas was the original aggressor in the incident.
Thomas was shot and killed outside a home near Baylor University during a party when he showed up and threatened multiple individuals with a firearm. Calvin Nichols, Jr. was the first to be arrested and charged with murder, though officers at the time admitted that it was Thomas who was threatening the partygoers. Jaytron Scott was charged a few months later, though by that time investigators and prosecutors should have had access to the doorbell camera footage that the D.A. now says bolsters their claim of self-defense.
A review of doorbell video revealed that moments before the shooting, Joseph Craig Thomas, Jr. was aggressively brandishing a firearm at multiple bystanders on the porch of the residence and threatening to shoot them. The DA statement said the video specifically captured Thomas pointing his firearm directly at two individuals on the porch of the residence, and making verbal threats to shoot those nearby. The DA statement said Thomas then physically assaulted Calvin Nichols, who was standing near the porch.
Nichols’s cousin, Jaytron Scott, observed Thomas assault Nichols. Scott was only a few feet away from Thomas and could see that Thomas was holding a gun. The statement said in response to Thomas’s actions, Jaytron Scott pulled his own gun and shot Thomas multiple times in defense of Nichols.
Why was Nichols even charged when, by all accounts, he was the victim of a physical assault? And why did it take more than two years for prosecutors to reach the obvious conclusion that Scott was acting in defense of himself and others when he shot and killed Thomas, who by that point had pointed a gun at multiple individuals, threatened to shoot others, and physically attacked Nichols?
Assistant District Attorney Will Hix said:
“Our ethical and legal obligation is to not prosecute a case when a legitimate question exists about whether a defendant is guilty. An exhaustive review of this case’s evidence made clear that seeking a conviction would violate our oath to do justice.”
I doubt that many people would dispute that statement, but it doesn't address why it took so long for the D.A.'s office to reach that determination.
I can't help but think that the fact that both Scott and Nichols, who live in the Houston area, have had some run-ins with the law in Harris County may have clouded the judgment of prosecutors in Waco. Both men were in the Harris County jail on unrelated charges when they were served with arrest warrants for the murder of Thomas, but whatever issues they had in Houston had no bearing on the facts of Thomas's death.
Scott's attorney has questions as well.
Partygoers told police that Thomas showed up uninvited to the party and immediately starting threating others with a gun. He threatened a female student after she asked him to move his car, stuck a gun under the chin of a Baylor football player and then pistol-whipped Nichols as he and Scott were leaving, said Scott’s attorney, Bryan Cantrell.
Scott, acting in defense of his cousin, fired his pistol at Thomas, striking him at least 15 times, Cantrell said.
“I don’t know how this case got indicted,” said Cantrell, who teaches courses in gun safety and laws governing self-defense. “This was the clearest self-defense case I have ever seen. And I think the problem is a lot of attorneys and, certainly the people of the community, don’t understand the law of self-defense.”
Cantrell praised prosecutor Kristen Duron for going to the jail recently to interview Scott about the incident, most of which was captured on video. He said he is grateful the DA’s office did what he called “the right thing for justice.”
“It scares the public that a murder case got dismissed,” Cantrell said. “This was never a murder case. This was always a justified homicide. In fact, we have the investigating officer at the scene saying six or seven times, “Yeah guys, this is a justified homicide here.’”
Scott and Nichols spent more than two years in jail awaiting trial, only to be released when the D.A. dropped the charges this week. Cantrell blames the previous D.A. for the initial charges, which he says never should have been filed in the first place. As a result, two men have lost two years of their lives for a justifiable homicide... and one of them spent two years behind bars for essentially being the victim of Thomas's aggression. Justice may have eventually been found, but the more than 600 days Scott and Nichols were jailed is an injustice that can't be corrected.
