In the summer of 1998 in Indianapolis, a meeting between two men over a small drug transaction escalated into a fatal encounter. On the afternoon of June 23, 18-year-old Anthony Walker met James Smith in an apartment parking lot to purchase marijuana. After the sale, the two decided to smoke a marijuana cigarette together. An argument then erupted over a past debt Smith claimed Walker owed him.
The verbal dispute quickly turned physical, and at some point, a handgun was produced.
Walker shot Smith three times, with two of the bullets entering his back and one striking the back of his head. Following the shooting, Walker took the keys to the car Smith had been driving, which belonged to Smith's mother. He then moved Smith's body into the trunk of the vehicle.
After securing the body, Walker drove the car to a different apartment complex and parked it in a vacant garage. There, he removed Smith's clothing and discarded them in a dumpster, along with the car keys and the handgun used in the shooting. In the days that followed, Walker began using Smith's cell phone. The continued activity on the phone bill after his disappearance led police to trace the calls to Walker.
Over the course of the investigation, police questioned Walker five times about his involvement in Smith's death. He provided several conflicting stories before finally confessing to the shooting on August 6, 1998, though he maintained that he had acted in self-defense. On August 7, 1998, Anthony Walker was charged with murder, felony murder, robbery, and auto theft. Following a three-day trial, a jury found him guilty of the lesser-included offense of voluntary manslaughter, as well as robbery and auto theft. The court sentenced him to a 45-year term for voluntary manslaughter, a ten-year sentence for robbery, and a three-year sentence for auto theft, resulting in an aggregate sentence of 49 years.
