On a busy afternoon in downtown Birmingham on November 29, 1979, with the Christmas shopping season in full swing, Sergeant Albert Eugene Ballard, a 46-year-old white male, was on patrol. Just two days away from his retirement after 20 years of service with the Birmingham Police Department, his day was about to take a tragic turn. A call came over the police radio about an armed robbery at a local savings and loan, providing a description of a Black male suspect.
Sgt.
Ballard spotted a man walking on the sidewalk who matched the general description of the robbery suspect. He pulled his patrol car to the curb at 2nd Avenue and 19th Street North and called the man over. The individual, later identified as Josephus Anderson, had a long history of violent criminal activity. As Anderson leaned into the patrol car, he opened fire, shooting Sgt. Ballard multiple times at point-blank range before fleeing the scene.
A chase ensued as Birmingham police officers and U.S. Marshals pursued Anderson. They cornered him in an alley where a gun battle broke out, resulting in Anderson being shot multiple times and captured. The handgun used to kill Sgt. Ballard was the same weapon that had been taken from a slain bank guard in Atlanta, and Anderson was a suspect in that bank robbery as well.
The prosecution of Josephus Anderson for the murder of Sgt. Ballard was a lengthy process, spanning five and a half years and involving four separate trials. The first three trials ended in hung juries, which was attributed to a lack of positive eyewitness identification and questions surrounding the ballistic evidence. Finally, on May 25, 1985, Anderson was convicted of murdering Sergeant Ballard. The jury recommended a sentence of life without parole. Josephus Anderson died of natural causes in March 2021, at the age of 79, while serving his life sentence.
