Stephen Jerod Putnam, a 38-year-old White/Caucasian man from Ireland, West Virginia, died in the early morning hours of February 10, 2015, after being shot inside his parents’ Lewis County home. Putnam, who often went by his middle name Jerod, was a husband and father of twins who owned Jerod Enterprises and worked as a logger and heavy-equipment operator. He had graduated from Lewis County High School in 1994, played college football, and was well known in the Ireland community for his involvement in sports and Irish road bowling.
The shooting occurred shortly after midnight at the home of Stephen’s parents, Steve and Beverly Putnam, while they were away in Florida. Stephen’s brother, Kevin Lane Putnam, was at the residence with his girlfriend, Susan Whitehair. According to testimony later presented in court, Stephen arrived around midnight and told Kevin to leave.
Whitehair said an argument turned physical, with the brothers striking one another and Stephen at one point on top of Kevin. She described Stephen as the aggressor and said she later saw him near the front door holding a gun. Kevin moved down the hallway toward his parents’ bedroom, while Whitehair went into a bathroom. She said she heard Kevin telling Stephen that he did not want to continue fighting and warning him not to come farther down the hallway before she heard a gunshot. When she emerged several minutes later, Stephen was lying wounded on the floor.
When emergency personnel and law enforcement reached the house, Stephen was found unresponsive on the living-room floor with a gunshot wound to the chest. He was transported to Stonewall Jackson Memorial Hospital and pronounced dead at 1:58 a.m. An autopsy determined that the bullet had perforated his heart and lung and classified the manner of death as homicide. A. 22-caliber bullet was recovered from his body. The autopsy also documented blunt-force injuries to his forehead, nose and mouth area, along with minor injuries to two fingers. His blood-alcohol level was measured between. 15 and. 18, a level the medical examiner testified could have affected inhibition and coordination.
Kevin initially gave investigators a very different explanation for what had happened. At the scene, he claimed Stephen had arrived at the house already suffering from the gunshot wound. Investigators found that account suspicious because Stephen’s unlocked vehicle was outside the residence but contained no blood suggesting that he had driven there after being shot. Police did find an unloaded 9mm revolver and an open beer bottle inside the vehicle. Inside the house, investigators recovered a fired. 22-caliber cartridge and another. 22-caliber projectile lodged in a wall. Several firearms were collected from the parents’ bedroom, although the particular. 22 rifle prosecutors believed Kevin used in the shooting was never recovered.
During a recorded police interview, Kevin eventually abandoned his original account and admitted that he had shot Stephen during their confrontation. He told investigators that Stephen had chased and struck him and that he retreated into his parents’ bedroom, obtained a long gun and fired two rounds while Stephen was approximately six to eight feet away. One round struck Stephen in the chest and the other ended up in the wall. Kevin portrayed the shooting as the culmination of an escalating fight, but he also told police that he had not actually been afraid of Stephen. Those statements later became important evidence when Kevin argued that he had acted in self-defense.
The prosecution also presented evidence suggesting tension between the brothers had existed before the shooting. Their brother Jason testified that Stephen had said earlier that Kevin was staying at their parents’ house when he should not have been there and had talked about confronting him. Beverly Putnam, their mother, testified that she had previously told Kevin to stay away from the residence because of his behavior. More significantly, she testified that before leaving for Florida, Kevin had threatened to kill Stephen if she sent Stephen after him again. Beverly also spoke with Stephen only hours before the shooting. Stephen offered to remove Kevin from the house, but she told him to leave Kevin alone if he was not causing trouble at that moment.
Authorities charged Kevin Lane Putnam with first-degree murder in his brother’s death, and he was held at Central Regional Jail. A scheduled bond hearing in February 2015 was postponed when Kevin experienced chest pains and was taken to the hospital, after which he was returned to jail custody. On August 25, 2015, a Lewis County special grand jury formally indicted him on one felony count of first-degree murder.
Kevin went to trial in Lewis County Circuit Court beginning February 16, 2016. Prosecutors relied heavily on his recorded admission, the physical evidence, his initial false claim that Stephen had arrived already wounded, testimony about the earlier threat against Stephen, and the disappearance of the actual. 22-caliber rifle. The defense position centered on the confrontation inside the house and the claim that Stephen had been the aggressor. Whitehair’s testimony supported parts of that account, including her statement that she had seen Stephen with a firearm. Prosecutors, however, emphasized that Kevin had no apparent injuries when police encountered him, while Stephen had documented facial trauma, and that Kevin himself had never told investigators that Stephen was armed. The prosecution also raised credibility concerns about Whitehair because she was Kevin’s girlfriend and had left before police and emergency personnel arrived.
The jury considered first-degree murder, second-degree murder and the lesser offenses of voluntary and involuntary manslaughter. Deliberations were lengthy. Jurors asked the judge to explain the difference between voluntary and involuntary manslaughter and later reported being unable to reach a verdict. The judge gave them a supplemental instruction encouraging continued deliberation. Eventually, on February 19, 2016, the jury rejected the first-degree murder charge and found Kevin guilty of voluntary manslaughter in Stephen’s death.
Kevin sought a judgment of acquittal and a new trial, but both requests were denied in April 2016. On May 17, 2016, the court sentenced him to 15 years in prison. He appealed, arguing among other issues that the prosecution had not overcome his claim of self-defense, that the jury should have received additional instructions favorable to his defense, and that the trial court improperly admitted a. 22-250 rifle that forensic testing could not connect to Stephen’s killing.
On April 7, 2017, the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia upheld Kevin’s conviction. The court concluded that there was sufficient evidence for the jury to find him guilty of voluntary manslaughter, emphasizing his admission that he retrieved a firearm and shot Stephen, his original false account to investigators, the missing murder weapon, the lack of apparent injuries on Kevin, and inconsistencies surrounding the assertion that Stephen had been armed. Although the appellate court found that the unrelated. 22-250 rifle should not have been admitted as evidence because it could not be tied to the fatal shot, it ruled that the mistake did not prejudice the verdict enough to require a new trial. Kevin Lane Putnam’s voluntary-manslaughter conviction and 15-year prison sentence therefore remained in effect.
