Death penalty against man in homicide case is dropped
The Northampton County District Attorney’s Office will not seek the death penalty against the third man charged in the 2020 homicide of Nikal Jones during a party at a home in Wilson.
Prosecutors filed a notice in April that they were withdrawing the intent to ask for the death penalty against Elijah Ford, if convicted. Chief Deputy District Attorney William Blake said prosecutors determined the forensic evidence against Ford did not support the aggravating factors they would have to prove to have a jury impose a death sentence.
Ford, 33, remains jailed in Northampton County on a charge of criminal homicide, five counts of aggravated assault, weapons offenses and simple assault.
The district attorney’s office filed notices in January that it would no longer seek the death penalty against Ford’s codefendants Ca’Mel Douglas, 22, and Aquasay Harris, 32, who face the same charges as Ford in the Sept. 25, 2020, shooting that also injured another man, Shadee Johnson, 30. Blake said the district attorney’s office filed notices that it intended to seek the death penalty against Douglas and Harris to preserve its ability to do so beyond the deadline for the notice.
Blake said in Ford’s case, the decision to withdraw the death penalty came after new evidence made clear that it wasn’t warranted.
“There initially appeared to be indicators that aggravating factors might be present but we have received additional forensic evidence that has made it clear this is not a death penalty case,” he said.
Ford’s attorneys Robert
Patterson and Brian Panella have also filed motions to have a trial for Ford separate from Douglas and Harris. They are arguing that it would not be appropriate to try them together because Harris identified Ford as a participant in the murder in a confession to a cellmate that is expected to be used in the trial. Blake said it would be inappropriate to discuss Ford’s motions.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a defendant’s right to confront an accuser may be violated when a co-defendant’s confession implicating the defendant in a crime is introduced in a trial. Even an instruction to the jury to consider the confession against only the defendant who made it is insufficient to protect that right.
Patterson wrote that in statements to police, Harris and Douglas did not implicate Ford in the murder. Harris, however, “felt compelled to unburden his heavy conscience” by telling his cellmate of a plan, motive and conspiracy between himself, Ford and Douglas in Jones’ murder.
“In the telling of the plot, Harris inculpated Ford and Douglas as the joint murderers of Jones,” the filing says.
The cellmate later met with prosecutors and investigators and gave a recorded statement detailing the conspiracy, planning of the murder, the reason for the murder, the acts of each participant and the result of the conspiracy, as described by Harris while both were in Northampton County prison, Patterson said.
The filing says prosecutors are expected to introduce the cellmate’s statement as an exception to hearsay because it conflicts with Harris’ statement to police and would incriminate him. It would be prejudicial to
Ford and the solution is to have a separate trial from Douglas and Harris, the filing says.
Without the cellmate’s testimony, prosecutors potentially will have “great difficulty” establishing a motive and conspiracy, the filing says.
According to the filing, Ford, Harris and Douglas went to Jones’ Spruce Street home where they and two others passed a gun around in a non-threatening manner while taking drugs and drinking. Later in the evening, Harris and Douglas left the kitchen where the group was gathered and moments later rushed back in with guns blazing. Jones was killed and another man was shot in the groin but survived.
“The evidence against Ford is sparse and non-persuasive,” Patterson said. “He was at the scene and remained at the murder scene for 30 minutes after Harris and Douglas left.”
The filing also says the only unbiased and uninterested eyewitness testified that prior to the murder, Ford was not in the kitchen when Douglas and Harris began shooting. Ballistic evidence also rules out Ford as the triggerman in Jones’ murder. The only theory on which the district attorney’s office could win a conviction against Ford is that he was an accomplice and co-conspirator.
Without the cellmate’s testimony of Harris’ confession and implication of Douglas and Ford as the shooters, prosecutors have no evidence to support Ford’s conviction as a coconspirator or accomplice, the filing says.