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The NC Appeals Court has ordered a new trial for a 48-year-old Raleigh man convicted of shooting his girlfriend’s cousin during a fight on Bragg Street in 2022.
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Stanley Lemont Johnson, known as “Tadpole” around Southeast Raleigh, testified in Superior Court last year that he shot Jermiller Kernny with a gun he was not legally allowed to possess due to a prior felony conviction.
“I didn’t want to pull the trigger,” Johnson testified, according to court records, “but I did. It was just a spur-of-the-moment thing…. My mind was racing, and I just — I reacted.”
Though jurors in the case acquitted Johnson of first-degree murder, which requires premeditation, they voted to convict him of felony murder — a key point in his appeal.
Felony murder requires that the defendant commit the crime while in the act of another felony, in this case possessing the illegal gun.
The defense argued that North Carolina courts had never approved firearms possession as the underlying charge that justifies felony murder, and Johnson’s attorneys objected several times.
While the appeals court ruled that the firearms charge could be used to underpin felony murder, the majority also found that Judge Paul Ridgeway erred by presenting the option to jurors at the end of the trial, giving Johnson no time to prepare.
“Judge Ridgeway charged a novel felony murder charge … at the close of evidence, despite knowing … that by substantially altering the bill of indictment in this way, he would blind-side defendant and undermine the primary reason any defendant is entitled to an indictment in the first place: to prepare a defense strategy at trial.”
Judge John Arrowood wrote the 2-1 decision, which with Judge Donna Stroud agreed. Judge John Tyson dissented, calling Johnson’s trial fair and free from error.
At the 2025 trial, Tinisha Ratliff testified she had an “on-and-off” relationship with Johnson, sharing a rooming house on Bragg Street in Southeast Raleigh.
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She told the court Johnson had been both mentally and physically abusive, to the point she called police about her injuries a month before the shooting, and that her cousin Kernny knew about the abuse.
Iworthia Harris, Kernny’s godsister, testified that Ratliff found the two of them on the night of the shooting and pleaded for help, telling them, “He said that tonight is the night that he’s going to kill me. He has a gun. I really feel like he’s going to kill me.”
Harris testified that Kernny reluctantly stood up for her cousin and crossed the street to get some of her clothes, where she confronted Johnson outside.
“Ms. Harris stated that during the altercation, she saw defendant stumble backwards, catch his balance, raise his arm, fire his gun, and run away,” according to court records. “She testified that Ms. Kernny had not posed ‘any imminent danger’ to defendant, who was ‘the aggressor from the beginning.’”
Raleigh police put out a search notice for “Tadpole” later that day.
The state defines felony murder as a killing committed with a deadly weapon alongside “arson, rape or a sex offense, robbery, kidnapping, burglary or other felony.”
One issue in the appeal revolved around whether possession of a firearm by a felony fits into the “other” category. The court ruled that, while unusual, the scenario could not be ruled out.
“We cannot agree with defendant that the felony murder statute categorically excludes this possession offense from its ‘catch-all’ category,” said Arrowood’s opinion. “It may feasibly underlie a felony murder charge, but only under a highly specific, unusual, and narrow set of facts.”
The timing, though, proved more crucial.
“Although we have concluded that possession of a firearm by a felon is not categorically excluded as a predicate for felony murder,” the opinion said, “the trial court’s failure to put defendant on notice prior to the charge conference violated defendant’s right to due process.”
Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman has not yet commented Wednesday when or if Johnson will be retried.
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This story was originally published September 16, 2026 at 11:57 AM.