Billy Joe Shaver was on trial?

Texas country singer-songwriting legend Billy Joe Shaver was acquitted today of aggravated assault in the shooting of a man in the parking lot of Papa Joe's Texas Saloon in Lorena. It took jurors a mere two hours to decide. Shaver had testified that he acted in self-defense when he shot Billy Bryant Coker in the face with a handgun outside Waco on March 31, 2007. But prosecutors said no other witnesses had described Coker as "violent or mean." Witnesses told police they heard Shaver saying, "Where do you want it?" and then, after the shot was fired, "Tell me you are sorry" and "No one tells me to shut up." Coker told police the attack was unprovoked. Shaver's attorney declared that Shaver shot Coker after Coker threatened Shaver with a knife.

Shaver recorded more than 20 albums and wrote "Georgia on a Fast Train" and "I'm Just an Old Chunk of Coal (But I'm Gonna Be a Diamond Someday)." He helped launch country's outlaw movement. He lost his wife, Brenda, and his mother to cancer in 1999, his son and longtime guitarist Eddy to a heroin overdose at 38 on December 31, 2000, and nearly died himself the following year when he had a heart attack on stage during an Independence Day show at Gruene Hall in New Braunfels.