The former Mobile County commissioner Steve Nodine’s attorneys opened their defense by depicting Angel Downs, his girlfriend whom Nodine is charged with murdering, as a woman with reasons to kill herself.
But before the prosecution rested, they brought two men who had dated Downs in the months prior to her death. Scott Bedford, a Gulf Shores financial planner, told jurors that he met Downs on April 2 (Downs died May 9) through an online dating service and began seeing her. He said she never appeared suicidal. Roland Naseman testified he dated Downs in 2009 and Nodine would bang on the door and back window of the condo in Fairhope where Downs was living at the time. Then Nodine would pass out in his truck.
The defense built its case around Downs’ financial troubles, conflicts in the statements by neighbors and her 2006 suicide attempt.
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