JOURNEY TO JUSTICE
Murder suspect tries to beat system, even as case mounts
Antonio Smith sat in prison, undeterred. Investigators had collected a mountain of evidence connecting him to the killings of Eddie Powe and Breanna Eskridge, Powe’s girlfriend who had witnessed his death. They had recorded audio and video of Smith’s calls from jail trying to arrange the murder of another witness, John Spivey.
They had even found the guns used to kill Powe and Eskridge inside a storage unit mentioned by Smith in jail calls.
And Smith had written a series of jailhouse letters. In precise cursive, he instructed his mother to help him develop an alibi defense. He used guilt as a motivator, saying she owed him this because she spent his childhood addicted to drugs.
He instructed one of his girlfriends, who was pregnant with his child, to meet with his private investigator. He wrote about how he hated another pregnant girlfriend, Shantrell Lyons, an accomplice in his drug dealing enterprise who was known by her nickname, “Peanut.”
“I pray that one day I’m personally able to wrap my hands around her neck,” Smith wrote.
He sent letter after letter after letter.
Prosecutor Karl Hayes had been frustrated for months.
He had charged Smith with killing Powe and plotting to kill Spivey, but not with the murder of Eskridge.
He knew the basics of what had happened the night of July 19, 2015.
The teen was with her twin sister, who told police they had received a ride from an older friend, Wynette McClelland, to a house near N. 13th St. and W. Concordia Ave. A blue Impala followed them.
McClelland dropped them off and sped away. As the twins walked up to the porch, a masked man ambushed them, shooting Eskridge multiple times.
Two days later, detectives interviewed McClelland.
She confirmed dropping the twins off at a friend’s house on July 19 and seeing the Impala following her car.
McClelland provided her cellphone number to the detective.
That phone number — along with the phone number investigators later found in Smith’s blue Impala after a police chase — became key pieces of evidence.
Cellphone records showed the two numbers in contact the night Eskridge was killed. Phone location data placed both devices in the area at the time of the murder.
On March 4, 2016, detectives went back to McClelland and confronted her with the records. She confessed. Yes, she was at the Powe homicide.
Yes, she saw Smith kill Powe.
Yes, she knew Smith intended to kill Eskridge.
Yes, she dropped the twins off knowing Smith was stalking them that night.
And no, she never warned the girls of the looming danger.
The prosecutor charged her and Smith with homicide in the teen’s death.
“That was a great day,” Hayes said.
The case slowly wound its way through the court system.
Smith’s attorney had a conflict and dropped off the case. Veteran attorney Tom Erickson took the job defending Smith.
They tried to get the jail letters thrown out. They challenged evidence from the Stingray, a cellphone tower simulator used to locate Smith.
In late 2016, the case stalled again, when Smith had gallstones removed.
In the meantime, his coconspirators pleaded guilty. Lorenzo Beaton, the trigger man in the plot to kill Spivey, the witness, received 20 years.
Lyons, who ran Smith’s drug operation while he was behind bars and took part in the plot against Spivey, took a deal. And McClelland, who delivered Eskridge to Smith, also agreed to plead guilty. Both women were required to testify against Smith. At sentencing, Lyons got 15 years and McClelland received 12.
That left Smith and his nephew, another co-conspirator in the Spivey plot, awaiting trial. Smith decided to represent himself with Erickson, his attorney, on standby.
The trial began in February.
Smith questioned detectives, forensic experts and even Eskridge’s mother.
On the fifth day of testimony, he turned the case back over to his attorney when his accomplices came to the stand. After damning testimony from McClelland, who repeated her confession, the trial ended for the day.
The next morning, Lyons was scheduled to testify. She never did.
Instead, the defense attorney and prosecutor spent hours in the judge’s chambers and other side rooms, out of view of the jury, going back and forth over a piece of evidence: a cellphone map.
In Wisconsin, prosecutors share evidence they plan to use in court with defendants so they can prepare a defense or make decisions about pleading guilty. In Smith’s case, a trove of evidence had been turned over months earlier, including cellphone location data.
The data itself placed Smith’s phone at the scene where Powe was shot and killed at the time of the homicide. Milwaukee police also had produced a map showing the phone’s location.
The raw data and subsequent map had been given to Smith and his attorney.
But because of a timezone mix-up, the map wrongly showed Smith’s phone on the south side at the time of the murder.
The map had been in Greenwich Mean Time. Once adjusted to Central Time, the corrected map showed that Smith’s phone was at the scene of the Powe homicide.
Instead of helping his case, the map actually hurt him.
Smith weighed his options. He decided to plead guilty in a bid to get his nephew a lower sentence.
When Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Joseph Donald asked if he was entering that plea because he had, in fact, committed the crimes, Smith paused for a long time.
Then he gave his answer: “Yeah.”
Smith regretted his choice.
His effort to withdraw his plea failed and on July 18 of this year he sat before a judge to be sentenced.
Hayes, the prosecutor, detailed the case again: How Smith killed Powe, how he murdered a 17year-old girl who saw him do it and then tried to kill another witness, Spivey, from behind bars.
“The criminal courts are one of the last things that’s holding us together, judge,” Hayes said. “And it was Antonio Smith’s intention to put a stake in the heart of it.”
Spivey told the judge how the case had upended his life. Relatives of Powe and Eskridge, the 17-yearold witness, tried to put their grief and anger into words.
“He can still see his children behind bars,” said Letitia Eskridge, the teen’s mother. “I will never be able to see my daughter again.” Then Smith spoke. Strapped to a wheelchair with stun belts, precautions reserved for the most high-risk defendants, he denied plotting Spivey’s death from jail and killing Eskridge. He said he shot Powe in selfdefense after Powe first pulled a gun.
He made disparaging remarks about Powe and his relationship with Eskridge. He said he had “no doubt” he’ll get a new trial on appeal.
He took the words of the victims’ families and twisted them in a way that shocked even longtime prosecutors.
“I’m still alive,” Smith said. “I will still be able to see my children, hug and kiss my loved ones and I look forward to that as they come and visit me quite often.”
The judge gave him two consecutive life sentences without parole for the murders and another 45
years for the plot to kill Spivey.
After the sentence was handed down, Smith didn’t flinch.
He turned and blew a kiss to his family members. As guards prepared to wheel him out, one of the victims’ family members shouted something at Smith.
He replied: “You could be next, too.”
The next day, Eskridge’s family gathered at Lincoln Memorial Cemetery on Milwaukee’s north side.
They piled out of their cars and passed around balloons, some silver, others with purple flowers or in the shape of stars.
They walked to her grave in a clearing between the trees. Her mother had chosen it so sunlight could stream down on her. It’s also near family. A few steps away was the resting place of her cousin, Shirley “MooMoo” Eskridge, who was stabbed to death in 2013.
Eskridge’s family, including her 5-year-old daughter, stood in a semicircle around her headstone which was almost obscured by bunches of colorful plastic flowers.
Her twin, Brittany, had placed the flowers earlier and now she bent down to pull the blades of grass pushing up between blooms.
One of their aunts was asked to say a prayer. She flipped open her phone case and live streamed the memorial on Facebook.
“We got justice, y’all. We got justice, Bre,” she said, panning across the gathering before saying her prayer.
At the sound of “Amen,” everyone let go of their balloons and watched as they floated up toward the sky. Three got caught in a nearby tree.
“They’ll shake loose,” Eskridge’s mother said. “Maybe not now, but a strong wind will come.”