{"id":178993,"date":"2026-02-25T02:44:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T02:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/178993\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T02:44:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T02:44:10","slug":"appeals-court-reinstates-conviction-for-texas-man-involved-in-nashville-murder-for-hire-scheme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/178993\/","title":{"rendered":"Appeals court reinstates conviction for Texas man involved in Nashville murder-for-hire scheme"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) &#8211; 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. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Erik Maund, along with fellow Texas resident Bryon Brockway and North Carolina man Adam Carey, was convicted of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsmv.com\/2023\/11\/21\/3-convicted-after-kidnapping-murdering-2-murder-for-hire-scheme-nashville\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.wsmv.com\/2023\/11\/21\/3-convicted-after-kidnapping-murdering-2-murder-for-hire-scheme-nashville\/\">murder-for-hire with death<\/a> after a jury trial in November 2023. Brockway and Carey were also convicted of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and kidnapping with death. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">According to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tba.org\/?pg=Articles&amp;blAction=showEntry&amp;blogEntry=139023\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.tba.org\/?pg=Articles&amp;blAction=showEntry&amp;blogEntry=139023\">Tennessee Bar Association<\/a>, it was later argued that the district court inadvertently provided the jury \u201cseveral unadmitted exhibits and failed to provide some of the admitted exhibits,\u201d a realization made months after the verdict. The defendants then sought a new trial, which was originally granted. <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"link | text-reset d-block h-100 w-100\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wsmv.com\/page\/our-apps\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_self\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure-img img-fluid mx-auto d-block\" alt=\"WSMV - template image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/PYQCNXWUIVE27BALA565ZY2LFQ.png\" width=\"980\" height=\"199\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">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. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tba.org\/docDownload\/2909415\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.tba.org\/docDownload\/2909415\">court\u2019s opinion<\/a> states that an error is harmless when admitted evidence is so overwhelming that \u201cthe prejudicial effect of the [error] is &#8230; insignificant by comparison.\u201d They added that if the outcome would not have been any different without the error, the error is also considered harmless. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cAlthough the trial error is procedurally worrisome, the mild nature of the prejudice and the significance of the government\u2019s other evidence make this error harmless to each defendant,\u201d the opinion states. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">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\u2019s car dealerships in Austin, Texas, about the affair. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">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. <\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2025 WSMV. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) &#8211; An Appeals Court has reinstated the conviction for Erik Maund, one of three men&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[69906,132,71889,71890,71891,7657,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-178993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-appeals-court","tag-austin","tag-erik-maund","tag-murder-for-hire","tag-murder-scheme","tag-nashville","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}