November 24, 2025
The judge agreed with a motion filed by the cop’s defense about certain clerical errors regarding jury selection.
A New Mexico cop will see a new trial despite his initial guilty verdict in the fatal shooting of a Black man over an alleged stolen beer can.
In February, former Las Cruces Police Officer Brad Lunsford received a guilty manslaughter verdict for the fatal shooting of a 36-year-old Black man named Presley Eze.
Eze, a husband and father, was shot in 2022 after shoplifting a can of Budweiser beer from a gas station store.
.Deeming the evidence used as “weak in proof,” New Mexico District Judge James B. Foy ordered a new trial in October, but Lunsford has continued to jeopardize his own upcoming civil trial. According to the Atlanta Black Star, he deleted messages sent by his fellow officers and chiefs who supported him in the courtroom during his criminal case.
Lunsford has returned home to his family but must face a civil trial in addition to the retrial.
“If you try this case 10 times, the fact is, Brad Lunsford took a gun, put it on my son’s head, and shot him at point-blank range,” his mother, Loretta Eze, told KFOX14.
Eze sat in the passenger seat of a friend’s car in the gas station parking lot when the officer arrived over the alleged shoplifting. Despite the gas station attendant’s claims, Eze, a first-generation Nigerian-American, told law enforcement that he already had the beer can when he appeared at the store to buy a box of cigarettes.
However, the cashier refused to ring him up because he lacked identification. Later footage revealed that Eze had already entered the store with the can, trading it in for a colder one inside.
Accused of stealing the beer, Eze urged the officer to check the security footage to prove his innocence, but the officer did not do so. Body camera footage showed the cop mispronouncing Eze’s name, leading him to run it through the system to check for warrants inaccurately.
Lunsford and another officer then pulled Eze out of the car, putting him on the ground. One of the cops’ tasers fell next to Eze’s right hand as they pinned him down. However, as Eze pulled himself up and seemingly touched the taser, Lunsford reacted by pulling out his gun and killing him. The district attorney’s office charged him with voluntary manslaughter with firearm enhancement.
A motion filed by Lunsford’s attorneys citing judicial errors, including an improper juror switch and juror bias, led Foy to reverse the decision.
“The defense’s accusations of bias based on a juror’s political beliefs is contrary to the law and to the impartial administration of justice,” said New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, said in a statement to FOX14, in March when Lumsford was released. “Jurors are entrusted to decide cases based on evidence, not to be subjected to public humiliation and personal attacks for an unpopular verdict. The defense team failed to do their job during jury selection. It should not be allowed to engage in a partisan witch-hunt now that a properly seated jury rejected Lunsford’s defense and found him guilty of manslaughter.”
As for the civil trial, the Eze family’s attorney stated in a motion that the deleted text messages hold ground for a default judgment, claiming that the cop destroyed crucial evidence. The default judgment would evade trial and grant the Eze family the monetary damages they seek for the loss. However, another judge ruled against the default judgment, instead ordering the cop to pay the family’s attorney’s fees.
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