Man indicted in fatal shooting of ex-Saints player

Source: www.chron.com --- Monday, May 02, 2016
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A business owner and semiprofessional football player was indicted Thursday on a second-degree murder charge in the shooting death of retired New Orleans saints' defensive end Will Smith. Cardell Hayes was also indicted on a charge of attempted second-degree murder because police say he wounded Smith's wife in the shooting. The Smith family says they're pleased, though not surprised, that a grand jury has indicted Hayes in Smith's death and attempted murder of Smith's wife, Racquel, Thomson said in a statement Thursday evening. During that hearing, Fuller accused prosecutors of trying to "jam an indictment down our throats" by trying to take Hayes to a grand jury proceeding when they knew that Fuller and his co-counsel would be in court on other matters. Assistant district attorneys hustled the indictment into a magistrate's courtroom just after a private investigator testified that a witness told him she saw retired police officer William Ceravolo take a gun from the front seat of Smith's car before investigators arrived — something that might bolster self-defense claims. Dane Ciolino, a criminal law professor at Loyola University-New Orleans, said in an email that it was "most unusual" for an indictment to be handed down during a preliminary hearing, but not unprecedented. ...