Work in progress
Stretch of Germantown Road being widened
Donnie Jackson, 47, directs traffic on Germantown Road so that R. Woods Trucking driver Andrew Johnson’s exit is clear while they work on widening the road Tuesday afternoon near the Germantown and Crestridge intersection. The $3.9 million project, which covers less than a mile, is scheduled to be complete in July 2014.
connected the only functioning smoke detector in the house, setting it on the floor, the judge concluded.
In a fiery argument lobbying for transfer, Dan Byer, an assistant district attorney, said Ray knew his mother would die after he blocked her escape route.
“He set that trap for her,” Byer said. “He set that fire. And he walked out.”
The prosecutor said autopsy findings show Wallace, a U. S. Postal Service letter carrier, “was alive as she burned.”
Ray left the house near Hacks Cross and Shelby Drive in Southeast Shelby County, and went for a walk. He returned later and stood next to a neighbor across the street at about 6 a. m. as they watched firefighters battle the blaze.
When off icials approached him to ask if anyone was inside the house, the teen repeatedly said he didn’t know.
“He stood outside across the street and said nothing,” Byer said. “Those seconds were critical, and he knew that.”
The prosecutor described the teen as manipulative, not remorseful.
When interviewed by Shelby County Sheriff’s investigators, he cried when they exposed his initial lies blaming the fire on someone else. However, investigators said he seemed nonchalant, not tearful, when he was told his mother’s body had been found.
Byer also pointed to trouble the teen has had while jailed after his mother’s death, including trying to hide a fork in his shirt sleeve.
He has cursed and threatened a female detention officer, gotten into a fight, and threatened to kill other juvenile detainees, the prosecutor said. During a meeting with the court psychologist, detention officers leapt across the room when they thought the 6-foot2, 205-pound teen was about to pounce at her, Byer said.
Gowen, an assistant public defender, had urged the judge to leave Ray in the juvenile system and place him in state custody where he could get adequate mental health treatment for the f irst time.
“He can be helped,” Gowen said.
The judge said his decision was guided by the defense’s own mental health expert, who testified that he wasn’t certain the teen could be rehabilitated.
After the hearing, Ray, 14, collapsed to the floor and sobbed loudly in an inmate holding area adjacent to the courtroom.
“He was too upset to talk” to the defense team, Gowen said. “He’s a child, and he cried like a child. He knows it’s bad.”
If convicted on the firstdegree murder charge, Ray would face an automatic sentence of life in prison. Parole would not be possible, even with good behavior credits, for 51 years. And prosecutors may try to seek a sentence of life without parole.
But Gowen, who successfully persuaded the judge to toss out the teen’s confession, said outside court that an acquittal is possible in a case with limited physical evidence and no eyewitness.
“It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve walked a ‘murder 1’ suspect out of jail. It wouldn’t be the second time,” the defense attorney said. “There’s very little evidence.”