Defense questions witness in 2015 felony murder trial
With a picture of her former boyfriend in a tuxedo hanging behind her, Kortnee Thompson spoke softly about the night he died.
“He came inside, he talked to my mom, she made dinner, and then we left,” Thompson, a former Chattanooga resident, said Wednesday on the stand in Hamilton County Criminal Court.
From there, prosecutors say, she and Charles Holsey drove to North Chattanooga to sell some marijuana to a man Holsey had been texting named “BJ.” But the March 2, 2015, deal went south when “BJ” turned out to be Briston Smith and his armed friend Abram Young — not Holsey’s acquaintance from Berry College who went by the same nickname. Holsey, 19, suffered three fatal gunshot wounds through the backseat of his car when a scuffle broke out in a parking lot behind the Kangaroo gas station at 310 Sylvan St.
The reason Smith, now 20, stood trial for the first day Wednesday, is because he ordered Young to “shoot his ass,” prosecutors say.
“And Abram Young did,” assistant district attorney AnCharlene Davis said. “He fired three shots into the driver’s seat into Charles Holsey’s back. And at that point, the defendant and Abram fled. And on the way, Abram fires one more shot.”
Smith, Young, and a third man who allegedly drove them, Robert Thompson,
were arrested days later, and all face charges of felony murder and especially aggravated robbery. Smith, the first to go to trial, faces a life sentence if prosecutors convince jurors he “unlawfully” killed Holsey while the trio was committing a felony.
“Ladies and gentlemen, he knew, before he left this residence that he and Abram Young and Robert Thompson did not have the $160 that [Charles] Holsey requested,” Davis said. “He knew Abram Young had a gun and was going to bring it with him. Throughout the course of the trial, you might ask yourselves, ‘Well, whose idea was this robbery?’ You will hear that it was the defendant’s idea to commit this robbery. He’s not just an actor. He was the mastermind.”
Smith’s defense attorneys countered no such plan existed and focused Wednesday on poking holes in Kortnee Thompson’s eyewitness testimony — and reminding jurors that Smith didn’t pull the trigger.
“So, you haven’t been able to identify anybody in the photo lineup, you remember two gunshots but there were four, you say you do remember somebody grabbed the marijuana but previously testified you didn’t see that, and you testified that you were on your phone,” Pearce said on his cross examination with the woman. “What you do remember is this exchange was going to take place?”
Kortnee Thompson said Holsey ended up calling “BJ” on the phone after the couple tried to meet up with him in a few different locations. “BJ” did not show up but eventually agreed to meet up in a parking lot behind the Kangaroo. Thompson said she saw two black males, one in a maroon hoodie and the other in a dark blue or black hoodie, approach the car, which was not what she was expecting since the Berry College “BJ” was white.
She spent the beginning of the interaction on the phone until it came time to pay and Smith and Young pushed back.
“It was at that point that Kortnee heard the man behind her say, ‘Gimme that — — ,’” Davis said. “He reached from the back seat … for the products. And the man behind Charles was holding a gun. And Charles says no, puts up a struggle. He refuses to cooperate.”
Thompson said she couldn’t explain the scuffle from there, but pleaded with Holsey to flee the scene after the gunshots. He made it about half a mile down the road before crashing in the 600 or 700 block of Market Street. Holsey was taken to Erlanger hospital, where he died.
Prosecutors also called Chattanooga police officers, who detailed their investigation into Holsey’s vehicle. One particular fingerprint offered a clue.
“So the print lifted from the door matches Briston Smith?” Assistant District Attorney Cameron Williams asked.
“Correct,” said David Franklin, a Chattanooga officer.
The trial resumes today before Criminal Court Judge Barry Steelman.