CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – A man charged with the 2019 murder of a Fort Campbell soldier has been found not guilty by a Montgomery County jury. After less than two hours of deliberation, the jury found Adriam Hodge, 26, not guilty of first-degree murder today.
On July 3, 2019, at about 11 p.m., police responded to a shots fired call off of Eighth Street. Officers arrived to find Army Sgt. Kendrick Grayer on a basketball court with multiple gunshot wounds. Grayer later died later from his injuries. Hodge was charged with first-degree murder.
A fistfight turned deadly
Erica Grayer, wife of the victim, witnessed the crime as it unfolded. Her testimony was that she witnessed her husband fighting with a man she had been talking to named John Dallen on the basketball courts at Eighth Street.
Kendrick managed to shove Dallen off during the tussle, and Dallen ran up the hill, returning only seconds later with a group of people, among them, Dallen’s close friend Hodge who was carrying a black gun with an extended clip, Grayer said. While one man held an unarmed Kendrick, Hodge began shooting, she said.
A wife’s reluctant honesty
Grayer was the prosecution’s only eyewitness. Throughout the first two days of trial, Grayer spent a total of six hours on the stand between cross-examination and rebuttal.
At the time of her husband’s murder, Grayer testified that her marriage was on the rocks. Kendrick and she would fight, and it would sometimes turn physical, and she had suspicions that he had begun cheating on her. That was when she reached out to Dallen, a friend, and began a relationship with him.
When Grayer was first brought in for questioning, she wasn’t forthcoming. She told the jury that Hodge had “1,001 friends in Clarksville” and that “nobody knew what he was capable of.” After learning of her husband’s death, however, she finally broke and told police who was responsible for his murder.
‘I’ll never see the court system the same’
“Juries can make mistakes,” Grayer told Clarksville Now after the verdict. “And in this case, they have made a big one that really has impacted so many people … including my daughter’s life.”
At the time of Sgt. Grayer’s death, he left behind a then-2-year-old girl. Her mother says she just turned 5.
“I know he’s guilty for a fact. I’ll never see the court system the same, I won’t ever trust it again. Now, this boy is about to be back on the streets,” Grayer said. “It’s not fair. He can see his son, and my daughter can never see her daddy again.”
Defense thankful for verdict
“We are immensely grateful that we have juries in this country,” said Hodge’s attorney, District Public Defender Roger Nell. “We are thankful that we do not allow law enforcement, prosecuting attorneys, and judges to convict our neighbors on their own and without the intervention of a jury of our peers.”
“We greatly appreciate the jury in this case. They listened intently to what information the state introduced based on an incomplete investigation, held the state to its burden, and returned the verdict that the state’s information supported,” Nell told Clarksville Now.
Nell said Hodge and his family are relieved by the verdict, and happy that the four-year-long wait is over.
“We hope that Sgt. Grayer’s family in Texas eventually gets the justice they deserve,” he said.
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