By MELINDA J. OVERSTREET
for Glasgow News 1
Further proceedings have been postponed again while lab analyses are still pending for a homicide case for which a trial that had been scheduled for this month was delayed after potential new evidence was found.
James Edward Campbell, now 47, is charged with murder in connection with the shooting death of Roger Noland, 35, of Scottsville in February 2023 outside the Glasgow apartment where Campbell was living. He also faces two counts of wanton endangerment due to the presence of two other individuals in the same general vicinity at the time of the shooting.
Noland and his fiancee, Felicia Nelson, with whom Campbell has two children, had come to Glasgow to bring Campbell and Nelson’s children to visit with their father. A message exchange prior to the visit had led to some tension, according to police testimony during Campbell’s preliminary hearing last year. Verbal arguing had occurred and then later, with Campbell’s two children inside the apartment, Campbell was outside when Noland, who was driving, Nelson, and a male child of Nelson’s were in the car about to leave. Campbell “verbalized something that got their attention to make them stop,” according to testimony.
Nelson got out of the vehicle and approached Campbell and they met somewhere between the vehicle and where Campbell had been in the porch area, and she was asking him why he was behaving as he was. Noland also emerged from the vehicle and then approached them, asking essentially the same thing, and the shooting occurred during this confrontation.
After the gunshot struck Noland in his left chest area, Noland returned to the vehicle and started throwing things out of his pockets, and Nelson ran toward him. In the midst of this, 911 was called. Noland was later pronounced deceased at T.J. Samson Community Hospital.
Noland had no firearm nor other weapon that was found that day, and Glasgow Police Department Captain Justin Kirkpatrick testified nothing had been said to him to indicate Campbell thought otherwise, and there was never any actual physical contact between the two men.
Campbell’s defense attorney, Johnny Bell, asked at that proceeding about any searching that occurred around the parking lot area, but Kirkpatrick said he had not been directly involved with that and couldn’t speak to any specifics related to searching.
In mid-March of this year, a gun was found in the vicinity of where the shooting took place but at the opposite end of the parking lot under a storage shed, Commonwealth’s Attorney John Gardner said after a pretrial conference in May, with his wife, Resa Gardner, an assistant commonwealth’s attorney, adding that, “at this time, there is nothing directly linking the gun to the victim in this crime.”
The gun was sent for testing, but by the time of the pretrial conference in May, it was still unclear how long it would be before laboratory analysis of the weapon would be complete and a report could be received, so the September trial dates were cancelled from the docket.
Resa Gardner said at that proceeding: “I am confident in saying that I was told that just to even process for fingerprints at this point, it would take a year.”
At a pretrial conference Monday in Barren Circuit Court that had been scheduled in May as a status-update opportunity, John Gardner said that no results have been received from the lab yet, and he suggested they consider having another pretrial conference in November and see where things are at that point.
After a brief discussion on dates, a new pretrial conference was set for 1 p.m. Nov. 18.
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