Murder suspects to appear in court

Published 12:00 am Wednesday, June 2, 2010

VIDALIA — Four men arrested in connection with a bloody shooting murder in Ferriday will make their initial appearance in court this morning.

Bryant LaKeith Bethley, Daniel Durans Butler, Reginald James Butler and Andreas Marquez Cauley will all be arraigned in Seventh Judicial District Court in Vidalia this morning.

Bethley, Daniel Butler and Reginald Butler are all charged with second-degree murder. Daniel Butler and Cauley are charged with obstruction of justice.

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Arraignment is the legal process in which defendants are given the option of pleading “guilty,” “not guilty,” “not guilty by reason of insanity” or “no contest.”

The four have all been indicted by a Concordia Parish grand jury in connection with an April 3 shooting in the 800 block of Alabama Avenue that left 25-year-old Reginald Green dead.

Green was sitting in a parked SUV with three other people at the time of the shooting. While he was shot repeatedly in the head and torso with a .223-caliber rifle, the others in the vehicle were uninjured.

Bethley is believed to be the gunman in the incident, and Daniel Butler and Reginald Butler — who are brothers — were allegedly in the vehicle in which Bethley fled the scene, according to Ferriday Police investigators.

Cauley allegedly threw the gun used in the killing into Black Bayou, but agents with the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries later recovered it.

A fifth man, Kendrick Jones, was arrested Thursday on charges of obstruction of justice for his alleged role in the incident, but he is not scheduled to be arraigned today.

Another man, Derrick Dewayne Bates, was initially arrested on charges of accessory after the fact to murder because he was at the same Clayton residence as Bethley when authorities arrived to arrest Bethley, but the grand jury did not indict him.

The court will hear a motion to release Bates from bond today.