Stanley Roger Beale, 36, was fatally shot in Richmond, Virginia on November 22, 1996. The shooting occurred after Darick Demorris Walker entered an apartment where Beale was with his 13-year-old daughter, Bianca, and another person. An altercation followed; Bianca reportedly told officers her father did not know Walker, but Walker opened fire. Beale was shot three times and died of his wounds.

A nearby fourteen-year-old girl testified she saw a man she knew as Todd enter her friend’s apartment that night, heard him say I shot him, and later identified Walker. Bianca identified Walker in a photospread. Walker was arrested, tried in late August and early September 1998, and convicted by a jury on capital murder (for the deaths of Beale and another man, Clarence Threat), firearm and burglary counts. He was sentenced to death for the capital murders and received additional prison terms for the other convictions; those decisions were later affirmed on appeal and a state habeas petition was denied.