Man enters guilty plea in 2009 homicide

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

A man who had a murder charge dismissed in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court in 2012 pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter Monday.

Earl Charity, 28, entered his plea before Judge Shirley J. Christian. He will be sentenced in March.

Charity was charged with aggravated murder in the Oct. 4, 2009, slaying of 23-year-old Darrick Hall.

In November 2012, former Judge James C. Evans dismissed the murder charge because he said prosecutors violated Charity’s speedy-trial rights.

Prosecutors appealed Evans’ ruling to the 7th District Court of Appeals, and the appeals court overturned the ruling in January 2014.

Another man, Marcus Rutledge, 28, also pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in Hall’s death in 2012 and received a six-year sentence from Judge Evans.

Hall was killed at North Avenue and Arlington Street on the city’s North Side about 2 a.m. Police found him lying in the grass on the east side of North Avenue about 150 feet north of Arlington.

Officers found multiple spent shell casings near Hall’s body as well as keys to a Buick Park Avenue. The car was about 30 feet from Hall’s body. In the rear seat of the car was a handgun, police said.

A witness told police she saw shadows near Hall’s car and then heard gunshots.

In January 2013, Charity pleaded guilty as charged to firing into a habitation, being a felon with a gun and two counts of felonious assault in a March 22, 2010, drive-by shooting in the 1100 block of Springdale Avenue.

In 2012, Charity went on trial on the charges, but the jury could not reach a verdict.

Judge Evans sentenced Charity to five years in prison on a motor-vehicle gun specification, consecutive to a two-year prison term on all the other charges combined. Nobody was hit by some 29 rounds Charity fired from a .40-caliber handgun, but bullets hit the home of one victim and a sport utility vehicle belonging to the other as the victims stood outside the residence.