The murder trial of Tyrone Stallworth is expected to continue today as the prosecution presents more witnesses.

Stallworth is accused of murder in the Jan. 27, 2004, shooting death of Clinton James Peeples Jr. outside a Voeglin Avenue residence.

Most of Monday was spent striking a jury. By mid-afternoon, the attorneys made opening statements and the prosecution presented its first witnesses.

Peeples’ father sat next to the prosecutor’s table and some relatives and friends sat behind the prosecutor’s table in the courtroom.

Relatives of Stallworth, including his brother Jarron, sat behind the defense table. Tyrone Stallworth, dressed in a yellow shirt, khakis and a khaki and brown tie, sat next to his attorney.

Security in the courtroom was tight with pat downs and wand searches of everyone who entered. Nobody was allowed to leave or enter, unless the judge called for a break.

Former district attorney Ed Green was appointed by Fourth Judicial Circuit District Attorney Michael Jackson to prosecute Tyrone Stallworth, who is represented by criminal defense attorney Bruce Maddox of Montgomery.

Green told the jury Peeples and Marcus Edwards were out that night, having a good time and on their way to see some girls. The house at 1307 Voeglin Ave. was filled with people who were gathered in a back room with musical instruments, preparing to sing.

“It was just a night of fun and pleasure,” Green told the jury in his opening statement.

When the two young men arrived at the house, Peeples stepped out of the car and walked toward the house. A hail of bullets greeted him. He turned, said the prosecutor.

“He receives a hail of bullets, nine millimeter. He turns. A bullet catches him through the chest and rips through the heart,” Green continued. “He turns. He’s dying, but he doesn’t know it. He turns and falls across the front of the car.”

Meanwhile, inside the house, people dove for cover. Three witnesses told the jury how they dodged bullets.

But in his opening statement, Maddox said nobody saw who shot Peeples. “That’s the issue,” Maddox said, “who shot the man? Who killed him?”

The first three witnesses didn’t answer that question.

Jacqueline Mays, who was there with her husband, Harold, that evening said everyone had been at church earlier and they had gone to the house on Voeglin for “choir practice.”

She said people were listening to music; some of the men were working with the instruments and she had just finished playing with a baby in the house when she went into the music room and stood, watching, Mays said.

All of the sudden, her husband grabbed her by the back of the head and shoved her down to the floor.

“As soon as I hit the floor, I could see the shooting through the dry wall and all that,” she said. “Where he snatched me down from, I would have been shot in the head a couple of times.”

Nobody in the house was injured.

Two other witnesses, including Harold Mays, told the court similar stories about the house being shot up, but none testified seeing who pulled the triggers.