Davis Jr. murder trial closes, heads to a jury

Attorneys present vastly different theories

Three Baltimore defense attorneys have spent a week questioning crime scene evidence and trial testimony as they sought to build a case that police framed Keith Davis Jr. for murder.

They noted discrepancies big and small: no motive, a missing shell casing from an experimental test fire, the prosecutors’ decision not to call the lead detective.

As the trial closed Thursday, prosecutors offered jurors their take on the defense strategy for the first time.

“This is something called ‘manufactured drama,’” Assistant State’s Attorney Patrick Seidel told the jury. “When the evidence hurts the case, you start to manufacture drama. It’s a trick — it’s a trick. It’s designed to confuse you because they don’t want you talking about the evidence.”

He spoke during the tense closing arguments in the fourth murder trial against Davis in Baltimore Circuit Court. Davis is accused of gunning down Pimlico security guard Kevin Jones four years ago. The courtroom was packed — “There’s no seats,” a sheriff’s deputy told latecomers — as the repeated prosecutions of Davis have made him a political flashpoint.

To a band of his grassroots supporters, those who cheer encouragement when he’s led from the courthouse, his case spotlights dirty cops who victimize young black men and prosecutors who railroad them into criminal convictions.

Jones was gunned down while he walked to work around 4:45 a.m. in June 2015. He was shot 11 times — once in his face — and died in the parking lot of Pimlico Race Course. Prosecutors have tried Davis, 27, three previous times for the murder. Twice, the juries were deadlocked; once, a judge threw out his conviction.

Davis is charged with second-degree murder and use of a firearm in a crime of violence. Prosecutors had offered him a plea deal of 30 years in prison with 20 additional years if he breaks the terms of his release. But Davis turned them down. He has maintained his innocence.

Assistant Public Defender Deborah Levi told jurors that police chased Davis into a mechanic’s garage in Northwest Baltimore, thinking he had a gun, and opened fire. When they realized their mistake — Davis laying there bleeding, shot in his face — they planted a gun on him to cover their tracks, she said.

In her closing argument, she role-played an officer.

“Holy crap. We just shot at a man33 times and he didn’t have a gun. Go get one!”

She urged the jury to consider the man sitting in the front row of the gallery: Baltimore Homicide Det. Mark Veney, who investigated Jones’ murder.

Levi has accused him of tampering with evidence.

Veney said he pocketed two of Jones’ phones and kept them 11 months. He found no evidence on them and intended to return them to Jones’ family, he said.

On Thursday, Levi walked right up to him, pointed and asked the jury: “Why in God’s green Earth did he hold onto those phones?”

Police firearms technicians also test fired the pistol police said they found with Davis, but the shell casing from their test is missing. Levi turned the little envelope upside down before the jury: empty.

“You don’t know if the test fire is sitting in Det. Veney’s locker where all that other evidence that doesn’t get submitted is,” she told the jury.

After the prosecution and defense completed their closing arguments, the jury began deliberating Thursday afternoon.

Discrepancies in the evidence and trial testimony have fueled theories of a police cover-up, but prosecutors had ignored such arguments. Police lab technicians testified to matching the pistol with shell casings around Jones’ body. They testified to finding Davis’ fingerprints on the pistol.

Surveillance cameras captured the killer stalking Jones and wearing distressed designer jeans. The very same jeans, Seidel said, police found on Davis.

Investigators conducted DNA tests of the jeans, but they found none of Jones’ blood, which also spurred theories of a cover up. Seidel said the blood pooled in Jones’ chest.

“This isn’t an episode of ‘Dexter,’” he told the jury, “this is real life.”

With his voice rising, Seidel went further to discredit the theory of a cover-up. Separate shifts investigated the killing of Jones and the police shooting of Davis. Were they all in cahoots? Why would the real killer leave a gun behind, a gun for police to plant?

“Everybody is lying. Everybody is corrupt. Everybody is dirty. Everybody who is involved has to be in on it, and that defies common sense,” Seidel told the jury. “We don’t abandon our common sense when we come into the courtroom.”