A Greenwood, S.C., man received a 30-year prison sentence after he was convicted of murder for shooting another man during a poker game last summer.
A jury deliberated for more than six hours before finding 58-year-old Freddie Edwards guilty of murder Thursday night, prosecutor Jerry Peace said. Edwards will have to serve his sentence completely.
Witnesses said George Freeman was shot in July 2005 after refusing to follow one of Edwards' poker game rules about putting money into the pot.
After the argument, Edwards went to his house and got a gun, then chased Freeman, who fell down as he tried to run away. Edwards caught up and shot Freeman once in the face, Peace said.
Both men were good people and Edwards just got caught up in his anger, the prosecutor said.
"Sometimes you have good people who do stupid things," Peace said.
Sometimes people take this game a bit too seriously, though in this instance I'm not sure how much this episode was about the poker and how much was the result of a powder keg waiting to blow. It sort of reminds me of an incident in Alabama a couple of years ago in which a man shot his own son in the face after he said something in a smart aleck tone to his dad after the Crimson Tide gave up a touchdown in a game the two were watching on TV. Yep, we take our 'Bama football a little too seriously down here too...
