A veteran Fulton County prosecutor acknowledged Monday that he isn't convinced Michael Murphy, 17, fired the fatal shot that killed a man. So why, nine months after the slaying, is the teen jailed on a murder charge?

Prosecutor Jack Barrs told a judge Monday he didn't believe he had enough evidence against Murphy and was willing to send the case back to Juvenile Court on reduced charges but his boss, District Attorney Paul Howard, told him to indict the teen on murder charges. Now, the teen is charged as an adult and faces an automatic life sentence if convicted.

During a bond hearing Monday, Superior Court Judge T. Jackson Bedford Jr. told prosecutors to do more investigating.

"We don't want to convict the wrong man and we don't want a killer out there," Bedford said. "It seems to me it's inappropriate to continue to play games."

Howard declined to comment other than to say, "The indictment speaks for itself."

Defense attorney Rusty Mayer insists his client isn't the one to blame for the June 17, 2007 shooting of Byron Watson, 18, who died a couple of days later.

Instead, Mayer claims that Watson was with a group of 15-20 teens who had surrounded Murphy's Mills Street apartment near the Georgia Aquarium. They were angry with Michael Murphy's mom, Teresa Murphy, who then worked as a security guard at the complex, Mayer said.

"She had run several of the kids off or had them arrested for selling weed or trespassing," Mayer said.

Teresa Murphy, who legally carried a gun, also made enemies in her other jobs —tracking down fleeing suspected felons as a bounty hunter and snitching on lawbreakers as a criminal informant to Atlanta police.

So she was frightened when she spotted the group of teens walking up to her apartment. She yelled for her son, who also had a gun, to come to her aid.

Someone from the crowd yelled: "Pull the tool!" which Michael Murphy feared meant he or his mother was about to be shot.

Murphy's attorney admits that Murphy fired a shot into the crowd as someone from the crowd fired in his direction.

The victim fell to the ground and police arrested Michael Murphy. But, an autopsy proved that the victim was shot from behind.

So he was likely killed by accident by one of his own buddies standing behind him who meant to hit the Murphys, Mayer argued.

Prosecutors can't explain how Michael Murphy, who was facing the crowd, could have shot the victim in the back.

Even the victim's mother, Delores Watson, said after the hearing that she doesn't know what to believe: "I wasn't there." All she is sure of is that she has lost her only son who worked with children at a Boys and Girls Club and who had sports scholarship offers from several colleges.

The judge acknowledged that Michael Murphy may not be the killer, but Bedford denied the teen bond and shook his finger at him, warning him about the dangers of guns: "One of these days, someone is going to have a bigger, faster gun than you and you're going to be deader than a doornail."