A Jefferson Parish jury on Monday (Oct. 20) found Lucien Bazley guilty of manslaughter, rejecting his assertion that he was defending himself when he shot a man in the face in a Marrero parking lot.
Bazley, 50, was on parole when he killed Wayne Martin on the night of Sept. 25, 2022. Martin, who was celebrating his 30th birthday, was shot in the right eye, collapsed and died in an Ames Boulevard auto parts business parking lot. Moments earlier, Martin, his older sister and a host of others were celebrating the occasion in a lounge across the street from the homicide scene.
Jurors declined to find Bazley guilty as charged of second-degree murder, opting instead to convict him of the lesser charge of manslaughter. It carries a sentence of up to 40 years in prison.
Bazley told jurors that he had been wrongly suspected on the streets of killing a man who was associated with Martin. Bazley alleged that Martin was walking behind him when he brandished a firearm and prepared to shoot him.
The incident, which was recorded by a nearby business’s video security system, shows Bazley walking ahead of Martin and without provocation, he turned and shot Martin. Martin immediately collapsed.
Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office deputies found no firearms on Martin’s body on the scene, undercutting Bazley’s self-defense claim. A social media video later surfaced showing Martin dancing inside the lounge and brandishing what appeared to be a firearm. The state argued that Bazley’s defense belies reason that if he was in fear for his life, he would not have turned his back on man he says had threatened him.
“He did not kill Wayne Martin in self-defense,” Assistant District Attorney Sarah Helmstetter told jurors Monday in closing argument. “He turned around, shot Wayne Martin in the face and walked off, for 21 seconds, like nothing happened.”
The video shows Bazley calmly walking away as bystanders fled for safety. Twenty-one seconds later, Bazley was shot three times by an unknown gunman. Bazley stumbled away to his car.
He drove to his girlfriend’s home on Gentry Road, where he resided with members of her family. The Sheriff’s Office SWAT team arrested him there the following morning. The SWAT deputies lay siege to the house for an hour before Bazley surrendered.
Deputies encountered Bazley on the night before he killed Martin, in the same auto parts store parking lot. Bazley called 911 to report that someone had shot his BMW while he was seated in the car. However, on the night he killed Martin, he did not call 911, neither to report the shooting nor to seek medical assistance.
Because of his 2008 conviction of possession of marijuana and possession of cocaine, Bazley was prohibited from possessing firearms. On the night of the homicide, he took his girlfriend’s revolver without her knowledge and returned to the shooting scene from the previous night. “He was going to get revenge, some way, somehow,” Assistant DA Helmstetter told jurors.
This was the second time Bazley faced a Jefferson Parish jury for killing Martin. In June, Bazley, who represented himself without an attorney, was convicted of being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm, for which he has since been sentenced to 20 years in prison.
That first jury was unable to reach a verdict on the second-degree murder charge, leading to a mistrial and this month’s retrial.
On Monday, the second jury deliberated just over two hours in finding Bazley guilty of manslaughter. Judge R. Christopher Cox III of the 24th Judicial District Court is scheduled to sentence Bazley on Nov. 13.
Assistant District Attorneys Matthew Whitworth, Sarah Helmstetter and Rachel Warren prosecuted the case.