NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) – An Appeals Court has reinstated the conviction for Erik Maund, one of three men convicted for kidnapping and murdering two people in a murder-for-hire scheme in Nashville in 2020.
Erik Maund, along with fellow Texas resident Bryon Brockway and North Carolina man Adam Carey, was convicted of murder-for-hire with death after a jury trial in November 2023. Brockway and Carey were also convicted of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and kidnapping with death.
According to the Tennessee Bar Association, it was later argued that the district court inadvertently provided the jury “several unadmitted exhibits and failed to provide some of the admitted exhibits,” a realization made months after the verdict. The defendants then sought a new trial, which was originally granted.
However, the government then appealed, arguing it was not a structural error, but one that was harmless to the case, prompting the conviction to be reinstated.
The court’s opinion states that an error is harmless when admitted evidence is so overwhelming that “the prejudicial effect of the [error] is … insignificant by comparison.” They added that if the outcome would not have been any different without the error, the error is also considered harmless.
“Although the trial error is procedurally worrisome, the mild nature of the prejudice and the significance of the government’s other evidence make this error harmless to each defendant,” the opinion states.
Evidence from the trial showed that Maund had an extramarital affair with Nashville woman Holly Williams. Then in March 2020, Nashville man William Lanway tried to extort Maund, who was an executive for his family’s car dealerships in Austin, Texas, about the affair.
Gilad Peled, who has also pled guilty to the charges and testified at the trial, was hired by Maund to respond to the extortion attempt. Maund then hired Brockway and Carey to investigate the couple, and when the extortion attempts continued, Maund paid Brockway and Carey $100,000 each to murder both Lanway and Williams.
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