A 2021 murder charge against a 51-year-old Pelham man has been dismissed under the state’s Stand Your Ground law.

Charles William Hatcher was charged with murder in the shooting death of 43-year-old Tracy Lee Killingsworth on Hatcher’s property on Aug. 31, 2021. He is also charged with attempted murder in the wounding of Krystal Smith, who was shot three times in the face.

After a lengthy hearing in June, Shelby County Circuit Judge Lara Alvis on Friday dismissed the murder charge against Hatcher. The attempted murder charge was not dropped, however, and that trial is set to take place in August.

Hatcher had been held in the Shelby County Jail since September 2021, but was released Saturday after posting $20,000 bond on the attempted murder charge.

The shooting happened about 1:30 p.m. that Tuesday at Hatcher’s residence in the 700 block of Highway 72. Authorities received two different 911 calls about the shooting. Multiple rounds were fired.

Killingsworth was pronounced dead on the scene. Smith ran to another residence off County Road 35 to get help. She was critically injured but survived and testified at Hatcher’s immunity hearing last month.

Alabama is a Stand Your Ground state, which says a person is justified in using physical force on another person in order to defend himself or herself or a third person from what he or she reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of unlawful physical force by that other person.

Hatcher is represented by attorneys Jeremy Crowley and Scott Boudreaux. Assistant district attorneys Brooke Grigsby and Matthew Kimbrough are prosecuting the case.

The deadly shooting happened on Hatcher’s property in Pelham, which he inherited from his family and on which he has lived for more than 40 years.

That property has one main trailer where Hatcher lives, and other structures including a stand-alone garage where Hatcher worked as a mechanic.

According to Alvis’s order, there was a separate trailer where Killingsworth and Smith had lived for a period of time but were no longer living there when the shooting happened.

Prosecutors contended that Hatcher should be prosecuted because they were lawfully on the property.

Alvis, however, disagreed.

In her order, the judge wrote that Killingsworth and Smith were allegedly on the property that day to finish removing their belongings, which she said alone showed they were no longer living there.

Additionally, Alvis wrote, they went to the property in a four-door sedan without room to place any belongings. In that vehicle, she noted, there was a large semi-automatic weapon in a case, and a second gun.

Alvis said in her order that Hatcher had made multiple attempts to cut off all communication with Killingsworth and Smith. He kept his gate closed, and “wanted to be left alone,” Alvis wrote.

“They were not lawfully on his property,’’ she said.

A person is prohibited from immunity if they are involved in illegal activity at the time of the alleged crime, and Smith claimed that Hatcher used methamphetamine, but the judge said there was no evidence of drug use, except for medical proof that both victims had high levels of amphetamine in their system the day they trespassed.

“They drove onto his property and were armed,’’ Alvis wrote. “Tracy Lee Killingsworth approached Hatcher and physically attacked him.”

“The defendant remembers deciding to use deadly force when he was being strangled by Killingsworth,’’ she wrote, noting there was physical evidence on Hatcher of strangulation.

Alvis’s order does not say why the attempted murder was not dismissed, but she did lower Hatcher’s bond and ordered him not to leave the state.