By NEAL WAGNER / Managing Editor

MONTGOMERY – A 25-year-old Birmingham man will continue serving his 99-year prison sentence for an Alabaster murder after his sentence was upheld by the Alabama attorney general on May 15.

The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the murder conviction of Daveon Lamarnce Cathey on May 15, according to Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange.

Cathey, 25, of Birmingham, was convicted by a jury in March 2014 of shooting and killing Alabaster resident Jonathan Williams at Williams’ house in Alabaster in September 2011.

Reeves announced Cathey’s sentence in the Shelby County Courthouse on March 13, 2014. Cathey later sought to have his conviction reversed on appeal.

Strange provided the following details of the shooting:

“Evidence presented at trial showed on Sept. 6, 2011, Jonathan Williams returned to his home in Alabaster with his girlfriend’s 12-year-old son. Cathey emerged from the bushes, pulled Williams out of his car, pushed him onto the porch of the house, and shot him.

Cathey then ran away through a nearby wooded area. Williams and the boy entered the house and Williams collapsed against a wall.  After 911 was called, an ambulance transported Williams to University Hospital where he later died as a result of the gunshot wound.

Testimony at trial further indicated that Cathey told several people that he had shot Williams. Cathey attempted to conceal his involvement in Williams’s death by throwing away his cellular telephone battery and SIM card, burning the clothing that he was wearing during the shooting, and asking others to lie about his whereabouts in order to create an alibi. Cathey asked a drug client, Brandon Brown, to return to the scene and recover a gun and gloves that Cathey had used in the shooting. Brown testified that he refused and Cathey threatened to hurt Brown if Brown said anything about what he had done.

Alabaster police recovered a blue New York Yankees hat, which Cathey was seen wearing earlier that day, near the scene of the shooting. When the hat was later tested for the presence of DNA, the results revealed that DNA from the hat matched Cathey’s genetic traits.”