Judge delays trial in 2015 quadruple shooting
A 19-year-old man who was supposed to go on trial Tuesday on charges in an attempted quadruple murder case won’t appear before a jury until next spring.
Despite prosecutors arguing that a significant delay would harm the state’s case, Judge Barry Steelman agreed to reset the Cortez Sims trial to April 4 and told attorneys to return Nov. 22 to Hamilton County Criminal Court to deal with outstanding motions.
Sims, a validated gang member, was charged in a January 2015 shooting rampage in College Hill Courts that ended with 20-year-old Talitha Bowman dead, 1-year-old Zoey Duncan paralyzed, and her mother, Bianca Horton, and a different validated gang member, Marcell Christopher, injured.
Horton and Christopher identified Sims on scene and were primed to testify, records show. In late May, though, authorities found Horton’s body riddled with bullets in the 2100 block of Elder Street. And Christopher continues to face pressure not to speak out against Sims, prosecutors have said.
In previous hearings, Executive Assistant District Attorney Lance Pope argued for a closer date because the state’s witnesses have faced immense pressure in the case.
“We are dealing with a case where one of the witnesses has already been murdered,” Pope said in late August. “Not died. Not passed away from natural causes. Ms. Bianca Horton was murdered. She was one of the two witnesses who identified the defendant as the perpetrator.”
Furthermore, he said, a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent who needed to testify was taking
maternity leave in December and wouldn’t return until March 2017.
“Judge, we’re not talking about passing the case for 60 days,” Pope said last month. “We’re talking about passing the case for five to six months. And that would prejudice the state’s case.”
On Tuesday, after attorneys reset the trial date, Pope declined to comment.
For months, attorneys worked to meet their original Sept. 27 trial date in Hamilton County Criminal Court. But on Aug. 8, Sims said he wanted to fire his attorney, Brandy Spurgin-Floyd. He had filed an official complaint with a state board, he said, forcing Spurgin-Floyd to request to withdraw from the case.
Steelman didn’t grant the 19-year-old’s request for a new lawyer until earlier this month, saying he never found any issues with Spurgin-Floyd’s representation and that Sims refused to outline any reasonable and specific complaints. He appointed Lee Ortwein, an attorney Sims requested, who declined comment Tuesday, citing a motion about the level of media attention the case has gotten.
During one hearing, Sims complained SpurginFloyd never moved to suppress the identification Christopher made at College Hill Courts while lying in a puddle of blood with a bullet in his chest. Police said Christopher, 18 at the time, was captured on a body camera saying “Cortez … Cortez Sims” when housing authority agents asked who the shooter was.
It’s unclear whether that evidence will make it into the trial. There are a number of outstanding motions — whether gang identification should factor into the trial, whether authorities can prove a black hoodie with gunshot residue belongs to Sims, and whether jurors can hear the identifications Horton and Christopher made — that attorneys are scheduled to debate now that Sims has a new lawyer.