A date for a second trial has been set for the former Huntsville police officer charged with murder in an on-duty shooting in 2018.

William Ben Darby will go to trial on Dec. 11, according to the state’s online court file. Madison County District Attorney Rob Broussard also confirmed the trial date.

A Madison County jury previously convicted Darby of murder in 2021 but the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the conviction last month based on jury instructions given by the trial judge, Madison County Circuit Judge Donna Pate.

Pate earlier this month recused herself from the case and Circuit Judge Alan Mann will preside over the second trial.

Darby was released from prison April 13.

After the conviction was overturned, Broussard said he intended to try the case again.

“We have the evidence and certainly we’ll put it before a jury again,” Broussard told AL.com last month. “This is the system we have and I trust in the system, and this happens. We’ve had it happen before on other cases.”

On April 3, 2018, Darby shot and killed Jeff Parker, who had called police and said that he was about to take his own life. Darby responded to the scene in west Huntsville at Parker’s home. Two other officers were in Parker’s home attempting to de-escalate the situation.

Darby testified at trial, saying he shot Parker in defense of himself and the two other officers. Parker was holding to his head what proved to be a flare gun when Darby fired.

The appeals court ruled that Pate, the trial judge, should have instructed the jury to decide the case from the perspective of a reasonable police officer.

The appeals court ruled that Pate erred in declining to give the jury the following instruction requested by Darby’s attorneys: “The reasonableness of an officer’s actions in using deadly force must be objectively reasonable judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, the fact that officers are forced to make split-second decisions, and in light of the facts and circumstances confronting them at the time.”

In their opinion, the appeals court judges wrote, “Although the trial court was not required to use the precise language in Darby’s requested instruction, the court erred by refusing to instruct the jury, in some fashion, that it must evaluate Darby’s use of deadly force from the perspective of a reasonable police officer in the same situation.”

At the murder trial in downtown Huntsville in the summer of 2021, Judge Pate instructed the jury on Alabama self-defense law, which says that a person is justified in using deadly force if they reasonably believe another person is using or about to use unlawful deadly force.

AL.com reporter Ashley Remkus contributed to this report.