Tuscaloosa Judge Sentences Shooter to 30 Years Over 2020 Murder Near the Strip

A former Tuscaloosa bouncer who fatally shot a 19-year-old visiting for an Alabama football game more than five years ago will spend the next three decades in prison.

Circuit Judge Allen May sentenced Zachary Profozich to 30 years in the custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections on Monday morning for the October 2020 murder of Schuyler Bradley, ending a case that has stretched over more than half a decade and dragged Bradley’s family through years of waiting for justice.

Although Profozich was arrested and charged with murder immediately after Bradley died, he was released on bond immediately and has been living with his family in California for nearly six years.

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As the Thread has previously reported, a Tuscaloosa jury convicted Profozich of murder on May 14 after a week of testimony, but unlike a capital murder case that could carry the death penalty, the jurors had no role in determining his punishment. May made the sentencing decision alone during the Monday hearing.

Before he handed down the sentence, the courtroom heard from loved ones on both sides of the tragedy.

The prosecution, led by Assistant District Attorney Thomas Marshall, asked for a 30-year prison sentence.

Bradley’s family, clad in black and on the right side of the courtroom, asked May to impose the maximum allowed sentence.

His younger sister, Jersey, told May about the sorrow she felt upon turning 20 — a year older than Schuyler ever saw. And his mother, Daphne Groff, said the killing made Schuyler break the promise he used to make her all the time — to always be there to care for her.

The defense, led by lawyers Mary Turner and Joel Sogol, worked with social worker Joanne Terrell to draw up an alternative sentencing plan that they said would still punish Profozich, but also introduce mercy, compassion and his potential for rehabilitation into the sentence.

Terrell read excerpts from a series of letters submitted on Profozich’s behalf by his Catholic priest, a monsignor and a handful of acquaintances in the California justice system who called the now-28-year-old defendant kind, decent and capable of redemption.

His mother, Portia Profozich, also spoke through sobs on her son’s behalf before Zachary Profozich stood up and addressed Judge May and the Bradley family directly.

Profozich, wearing a red Tuscaloosa County Jail jumpsuit, said even in an alternate universe where he was acquitted, he would have been willing to trade places with Bradley and be dead so that the 19-year-old he fatally shot could live.

"If there's one thing you take away from this, ma’am, I need you to know that your son was not targeted, there was no bias against him, and it was not malicious," he told Daphne Groff, Schuyler Bradley’s mom. “I thought — I thought he was reaching for something, and he wasn’t. If I knew what I knew right now, I absolutely would not make the same decision."

Even as he expressed his contrition, though, prosecutors said Profozich was singing a different tune from the Tuscaloosa County Jail, where he’s been since his conviction. On a recorded call, the defendant reportedly blamed his situation on a “liberal” judge, a “liberal” lawyer and a jury made up of “twelve people stupid enough not to get out of jury duty.”

Ultimately, May did not accept the alternative sentencing plan and gave the state what it requested — a 30-year prison sentence for Zachary Profozich over the murder of Schuyler Bradley.

"In recent years, in many cases that have come before this court, I have detected a disturbing and disheartening trend — a callousness toward life — that has infected our society, where life does not have the value it once had. There’s an expectation in many cases that we have before the court — and not one that’s been started here explicitly — but an expectation that the court is to somehow recalibrate its sentences because of this dangerous cultural shift,” May said. “This court will not. It will not recalibrate, it will not lessen the value of life. What would we become? This court sentences Zachary Profozich to 30 years in the Department of Corrections. Any request for probation is denied."

Profozich turned and told his parents, friends and family that he loved them as he was led from the courtroom to be transported back to jail, then ultimately to a state prison.

For more exclusive coverage of crime and courts in West Alabama, stay connected to the Tuscaloosa Thread.