WEST CHESTER >> Attorneys in the trial of two Coatesville men accused of a fatal home invasion robbery and homicide disagreed in opening statements Monday over whether key evidence in the case convincingly tied the defendants to the crime scene, or were examples of speculative overreaching by authorities.
Defense attorney Evan Kelly of West Chester, representing Dominique Lee, likened the case against his client to the weather forecasts he read as a child hoping to get out of school for a snow day. All the impressive maps and diagrams could not completely guarantee that any snow would fall and were only estimates by the weathermen, he recalled.
Just so is the prosecution’s case, he said. “The government’s theory” – tying a fingerprint found on a plastic container stolen in the robbery to his client – “is based on suspicion, speculation and guess work,” he told the panel of six men and six women chosen last week to hear the case.
Likewise, attorney Samuel Stretton, also of West Chester, said DNA evidence that the prosecution contends would put his client, Lee’s half-brother Marquis Lee Rayner, at the crime scene, was unreliable because no one knew when it had been deposited. Should he write a story about the case against Rayner, Stretton said he would title it, “Coincidence” or “Wrongly Accused.”
But Deputy District Attorney Mark Conte, in his opening, told the panel that the evidence that tied the pair to the June 2012 shooting and death of victim Dominique Williams was obtained not just by luck, but also was good police work.
Luck came when city police found the container that had been taken from a bedroom dresser in the home that Williams shared with his cousin stuffed in a hedge not two blocks from the crime scene about two hours after the robbery occurred. Nearby, a black T-shirt, much like the ones worn by the intruders was discovered lying on he ground.
The police work was done by Chester County Detectives Harold “Butch” Dutter and Ken Beam. The container, Conte said, had a clear fingerprint that detectives were able to match to Lee’s. The T-shirt, on the other hand, had traces of saliva that a forensic analysis by state police found matched Rayner’s DNA.
Witnesses, Conte said, would tell the jury that neither Lee nor Rayner was known to associate with Williams or the two others who were in the apartment at the time of the robbery. They would also testify they did not know who they were.
“And as I stand here today no witness has ever come forward to establish” any connection between Lee and Rayner and the victim, except the fingerprint and the DNA. “There is only one possible verdict that you can reach, and that is that these two defendants are each guilty as charged,” Conte told the panel.
Lee, 21, and Rayner, 24, were charged in 2013 after county detectives linked them to the crime through that forensic evidence. Their trial, held in President Judge James P. MacElree’s courtroom, is expected to last through Thursday.
Williams, 22, was at home in his apartment in the 700 block of Merchant Street in Coatesville in the early morning hours of June 29, 2012. He sat playing video games with a male friend as a female acquaintance slept on a nearby sofa. Three men, all wearing T-shirts on their heads to conceal their faces, burst in through an unlocked front door around 12:20 a.m., all holding handguns.
One of the men immediately took aim at Williams, who was sitting in a chair in the front living room, and fired a single shot . The bullet hit Williams in the upper thigh and severed his femoral artery, according to Conte and court records. He fell to the floor, bleeding profusely.
The other men began yelling to those in the apartment to turn over whatever money or drugs they had. “Where’s it at?” they demanded. “Give it up!”
One of the men went to a back bedroom in the apartment, where Williams’ cousin, Aaron Crawford, was asleep. He woke up and was threatened by the masked man. Afraid, he opened his dresser drawer and showed the man a plastic Mason jar container, which had a small amount of marijuana, a few hundreds dollars and a package of cigarettes. Taking it, the man departed with his two accomplices.
The three inside the apartment called police and emergency crews arrived to try to save Williams. He was taken to the hospital but died of the gunshot wound sometime later. None of the witnesses were able to identify the men who committed the robbery.
According to Conte, city police found the plastic container, minus the cash and drugs, in a bush in front of a house on Chestnut Street about two blocks from Williams’ apartment. Less than 20 feet away, they found the black T-shirt. Crawford, who was taken to the spot by police, identified the container as his and sad that the T-shirt was similar to those worn by the masked robbers.
Conte sad that Beam, an expert in fingerprint science, was able to identify 11 separate prints on the container. He said that Beam focused on one that was most clear and complete, the others being smeared or incomplete. A check on a national fingerprint database was unable to match anyone in the city to the print initially.
But Conte said that an anonymous tip relayed to Dutter, the lead investigators in the case, identified Lee as someone who had been involved in the robbery. When Beam checked Lee’s prints against those found on the container, he got a match.
Likewise, Beam was able to spot traces of saliva on the T-shirt found. When tested by a state police DNA lab, one of the spots was matched to Rayner’s DNA profile. Two others could not be identified, however.
Conte stressed for the jury that in the ensuing time since the investigation, there had been no evidence found that would explain how the print could have been on the container and the DNA on the T-shirt unless they were connected to the robbery. He urged the jury to use their common sense in finding the connection to Williams’ homicide.
Lee and Rayner are charged with second-degree murder, robbery, burglary and conspiracy. Neither are necessarily charged with being the man who fired the fatal shot but are being charged as accomplices. If convicted of second-degree murder, they face a mandatory life sentence in state prison.
In their opening statements, neither Kelly nor Stretton offered the jury an explanation as to how either the print or the DNA had come to be on those items, saying it was the prosecution’s burden of proof to do so.
Kelly noted that the police had never been able to identify any of the other prints on the plastic container, even though there was enough to make a match if found.
“As of now, we don’t know who they belong to,” he said, pointing out that Williams was dealing marijuana out of the apartment and had customers coming through that Crawford did not know.
Stretton said police had not been able to identify when or how his client’s DNA had gotten on the T-shirt and whether it had been deposited there a week before, a day before, or 12 hours before the robbery. He also said he would call witnesses to say that Rayner had been at a social club in the city at the time of the robbery.
“There is nothing at all that places my client at the scene,” Stretton told the jurors. “There is very little evidence here, except a coincidence. That’s all.”
Testimony is expected to continue Tuesday.
To contact staff writer Michael P. Rellahan call 610-696-1544
