Convictions upheld in 2012 Sidney murder

The Nebraska Supreme Court upheld multiple convictions for a 2012 murder in Sidney.

The court on Friday upheld first-degree murder and weapons convictions and the life sentence of Jason Custer, who in March 2014 was convicted in Cheyenne County District Court for the killing of Adam McCormick in November 2012.

Prosecutors say Custer shot McCormick at a Sidney house after the two men argued over $160 in drug money.

In his appeal, Custer argued prosecutorial misconduct, that there was not enough evidence to convict him, and that the trial court gave faulty jury instructions and excessive sentences.

The high court rejected those arguments and amended the sentence only to reflect that credit given for 508 days already served by Custer applied only to his weapons convictions, not his life sentence.

Custer was sentenced to life in prison without parole in March 2014 for the murder of McCormick. A jury found Custer, 35, guilty of first degree murder, as well as the two additional weapons charges, on Jan. 31, 2014. He was found guilty after a week-long trial followed by five hours of deliberations. Custer shot 36-year-old McCormick, of Sidney, just after midnight on Nov. 3, 2012.

Custer moved to Sidney from California in early October 2012 to live with his friend, Billy Fields, and Fields’ girlfriend, Amber Davis. Soon after this a texting feud began over a drug debt that Custer owed McCormick. This altercation pitted Fields and Custer against McCormick. Immature messages and violent threats were lobbed from both sides. The fight ended when Custer shot McCormick twice while the victim was standing in a friend’s front yard.

During the 2014 trial, Custer admitted to shooting McCormick but claimed that he performed the act in self defense because he felt threatened. Custer said that he was taken aback when he pulled up at a location where he didn’t expect to see the victim and McCormick was there with two friends at his side.

Custer further testified that on the night of the shooting McCormick came at him with a pocket knife, after weeks of threats by way of text message. Custer purported that he shot the victim because he feared for his life.

The feud that led to the shooting was not the culmination of a conflict that lasted years, he told those in the courtroom.

“This was only a period of three weeks, judge,” assistant attorney general Michael Guinan said in 2014.

This argument escalated quickly. Custer could have withdrawn from the text message battle or refrained from going to McCormick’s location on the night of the shooting, but he didn’t.

“There was no threat of physical violence,” Guinan said.

Although McCormick might have threatened to hurt Custer through messages, he never followed through with these threats when the men saw each other in person. McCormick even failed to meet for a fight that was scheduled to take place between the two men.

Information was taken from the Associated Press and a March 2014 Sun-Telegraph story.