Jerriance Freeman pleaded guilty in the Pulaski Pike killing of Jamie Cawthorne and was sentenced to life in prison.

The plea is the end of the murder case Huntsville police opened the morning Cawthorne was found shot. WAFF 48 reported a life sentence and used the words that he will spend the rest of his life in prison. It did not publish a statute number, a courtroom, or a finding about parole. The 2024 account of the shooting still comes from police, not from a trial transcript.

Jerriance Freeman pleaded guilty to shooting and killing Jamie Cawthorne on Pulaski Pike in Huntsville, and he will spend the rest of his life in prison, WAFF 48 reported. The station published that account late Monday, Oct. 19, 2026. It did not name the judge, the courtroom, or the hour of the hearing, and it did not say whether the life term is without parole. A guilty plea is a conviction. The life term is the sentence WAFF reported. What the station left out is still left out.

The shooting was Saturday, Oct. 12, 2024. Huntsville police were called at 10:50 a.m. to the 4000 block of Pulaski Pike and found Jamie Darquez Cawthorne, 32, of Huntsville, dead of gunshot wounds, the City of Huntsville said in an Oct. 30, 2024 release. The department's Major Crimes Unit identified Jerriance Dural Freeman, then 38, of Huntsville, in less than 24 hours and obtained a warrant, the city said. Investigators believed the shooting followed an altercation between the two men. AL.com, citing Huntsville police Sgt. Chris Jackson, reported the same outline and said police believed the shooting grew out of a dispute. U.S. Marshals arrested Freeman in Colbert County, the city and AL.com reported. A Madison County Sheriff's Office roster lists his booking as 3:47 p.m. on Oct. 29, 2024, under number 00JI35654. The city's release, dated the next day, said he would be brought back to Huntsville and booked into the Madison County Jail. He is 40. The roster gives a birth date of Aug. 4, 1986, which matches the age of 38 police used in October 2024.

The case sat in jail for more than a year before a grand jury acted in public view. On Jan. 23, 2026, WAFF reported that a grand jury had indicted Freeman for murder in Cawthorne's death, that he was still in the Madison County Jail, and that his bond was $500,000. The station said no new court date had been set. An indictment is the formal charge. It was not, in January, a plea or a sentence. The murder count on the sheriff's roster is filed under statute 13A-6-2, described there as murder, non-family, gun. That is the charge WAFF said the grand jury returned. It is not a capital-murder allegation in the language the roster uses.

WAFF's Monday-night report is the first account that the murder charge has been resolved by a plea and a life sentence. The station's wording is that he pleaded guilty to shooting and killing Cawthorne and will spend the rest of his life in prison. It does not say he admitted a particular motive, and it does not revisit the altercation police described in 2024. Police belief about a dispute is not a fact he has been quoted admitting. The life sentence is what closes the killing, on WAFF's account. Alabama's murder statute allows a life term. WAFF did not say the judge foreclosed parole, so this story does not either.

A sheriff's roster checked Tuesday still had Freeman in custody, and it still listed the murder case as active, with a bond amount of $0. The same roster listed a second, separate case, promoting prison contraband in the first degree involving a weapon, also marked active. The sheriff's office warns on the roster that charges and bail can change after court and may not be current. A line that still says active is not a reason to ignore the sentence WAFF reported, and it is not itself a judgment. The contraband count, as it sits on that roster, is a charge. It is not a conviction, and no news outlet had described a plea or a sentence on it.

What happens next is the life term WAFF reported, and whatever the jail roster has not yet caught up to. The station did not say whether Freeman reserved an appeal from the plea. The guilty plea WAFF reported is a conviction for the killing. The contraband entry is only a charge. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.