After deliberating for over six hours, an Adair County Circuit Court jury found 43-year-old Jeff McGaha guilty of murder in connection with the death of Mike Cowan on June 7 of this year.

The jury’s verdict was announced at approximately 9:30 p.m. Thursday, December 8. Under instructions given to them by Special Judge James Bowling, the jury could have found McGaha not guilty of the charge, guilty of murder, or guilty to the lesser charges of second degree manslaughter or reckless homicide.

While it took the jury over six hours to reach their verdict, it took them only a few minutes to decide on a sentence for McGaha. After rendering their verdict and receiving instructions on the sentencing options, which ranged from 20 to 50 years in prison or life in prison, the jury was out for approximately 10 minutes before returning and recommending the minimum sentence of 20 years.

Judge Bowling set formal sentencing for McGaha for January 31, 2012.

In convicting McGaha of murder, the jury apparently rejected the defendant’s claim that on the day that McGaha ran over Mike Cowan’s four-wheeler with his car then got out of the vehicle and shot him in the head with a 12-gauge shotgun, Cowan himself was armed with a pistol and first pointed it a McGaha when the two met on Daisy Lane just across Highway 80 from McGaha’s residence and Cowan’s lawn mower shop. McGaha testified he feared for his life, and it was at that point that he ran over Cowan, then got out and shot him.

However, no other guns–other than the shotgun McGaha used to shoot Cowan and a .22 caliber pistol owned by McGaha that was discovered laying in the passenger seat of his vehicle were found at the scene and no one who testified during the trial said they saw another gun.

Currie Milliken, McGaha’s attorney, maintained that the gun could have been thrown into an area not searched by law enforcement, or someone could have come onto the crime scene and removed the gun prior to the scene being secured by police.

Rather than McGaha acting in self defense, in his closing arguments, Commonwealth Attorney Brian Wright said that Cowan never had a gun that day, referring to it as a “ghost gun,” and that instead of a “friendly” conversation that McGaha said he wanted to have with Cowan, McGaha planned to harm Cowan.

“If he just wanted to have a friendly conversation, why did he put a shotgun and a pistol in his car before he went across the road,” Wright told the jury.