“Ecstatic, relieved, thank the Lord,” said Evette Davis upon hearing a double guilty verdict Thursday against the man on trial in the death of her father.

A jury spent four hours debating whether or not 50-year-old George Moses of Orangeburg acted in self-defense during a fatal altercation more than two years ago that left a former policeman dead.

While Moses was charged with murder and armed robbery, a jury found him guilty of armed robbery but chose voluntary manslaughter instead of murder.

Under South Carolina’s two-strike law, one guilty verdict on either charge meant Moses would spend the rest of his life in prison without parole due to a previous charge.

In 1980, the Bushy Drive man was found guilty of murder in a Bamberg case. That case was overturned on appeal in 1991, leading Moses to plead guilty to a lesser charge.

After publishing the jury’s decision, Circuit Court Judge James C. Williams said Moses will be sentenced to prison, “for the balance of your natural life without the possibility of parole. The sentence on the armed robbery is also life without parole.”

Moses was charged with the murder of 57-year-old Harry Livingston, who was found dead in his Aultman Street home on Sept. 29, 2006.

Holding up a picture of Livingston’s severely beaten body, Assistant Solicitor Don Sorenson told the jury during his closing arguments, “There’s an old quote, a picture, a picture is worth a thousand words. When you get into that jury room, I’m only asking for one word, just one -- guilty.”

The defense, meantime, contended during the three-day trial that while Moses was involved in a struggle over drugs at Livingston’s home, he left him alive.

“Mr. Moses told you the truth as to what happened that night,” defense attorney Peggy Hinds said. “I’m not here to tell you he is a saint. I would ask you to understand that because he might do drugs does not mean he committed murder.”

Sorenson pointed out that investigative photos show blood spatter on a wall immediately behind Livingston’s head as he lay on the floor. Sorenson said it indicated Moses was on top of the fallen man, striking him with a stick or similar object.

However, the prosecutor said the most incriminating piece of evidence came from Moses himself when he testified on Wednesday.

Moses said he fended off Livingston’s dog with a chair in one hand and a stick in the other. Moses testified he then left the chair just inside the door as he made his way out.

“Ladies and gentlemen, there’s no chair inside that door, there’s no chair inside that door,” Sorenson said, holding up two police photographs of Livingston’s door and foyer area. “Can’t get around that, ladies and gentlemen.”

Chair or not, Hinds and co-counsel Doug Mellard held that Moses was defending himself from imminent danger.

“Mr. Livingston attacked him first, he (Moses) did not bring this on,” Hinds said. “Mr. Moses is not guilty of armed robbery, and Mr. Moses is not guilty of murder.”

The jury’s decision to find Moses guilty on the lesser included charge of manslaughter signals that while they found him responsible for killing Livingston, he didn’t have intent, or malice, at the time.

Present throughout the trial was Livingston’s wife and daughters. They said that while “Poppy,” as he was known to some, had his faults, they choose to remember a caring father.

“I can’t imagine there are many people who he didn’t help or didn’t like him, even with all his issues,” said Katrina Livingston, the middle daughter of a trio.

For as long as she can remember, for some unknown reason, her father called her “Peanut,” a nickname she answered to until Sept. 29, 2006 when that call of the news came.

“I just broke down crying,” Katrina said. “Everyone from the office came in to find out what was going on. I wasn’t coherent enough to tell them.”

Livingston’s oldest daughter had her nickname, too. Evette said her father called her “Pumpkin.” She remembers her father arriving home around midnight from the evening shift with the city police.

“I would get up and sit and talk for hours,” Davis said. “We would talk from 1 a.m. to 4 in the morning, everything from boys to school to goals. That was our time.”

The girls say when they were children, their father used to sing a song to their youngest sister, “Stephanie, Stephanie, I really, really love you. Stephanie, Stephanie, you know I’m always thinking of you.”

Katrina and Evette say they would sometimes join in singing.

Today, they say they still hear the baritone voice that floated gently over a baby’s crib in a darkened room long ago.

A tear trickling down her cheek, Davis said softly, “I miss him a lot.”

T&D Staff Writer Richard Walker can be reached by e-mail at rwalker@timesanddemocrat.com or by telephone at 803-533-5516. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.

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