Jury convicts man in killing

Prosecutor likens case to Shakespeare

After hearing closing arguments with themes from Shakespeare and “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a jury Friday convicted a Memphis man of first-degree murder in the 2011 shooting death of his girlfriend.

The Criminal Court jury of seven women and five men also convicted defendant Darius Jones on kidnapping and reckless endangerment charges.

Jones, 28, received a sentence of life in prison for killing Cortesa Chambers, 25, with a point-blank gunshot to the head.

State prosecutor Jeffrey Jones likened the witnesses in the trial to characters in Shakespeare’s story of “Romeo and Juliet,” in which a romance ends tragically.

Witnesses in both tales, he said, saw events from different perspectives, and in both, what began lightheartedly ended in death.

“But in our ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ only Juliet dies,” Jones told jurors. “Our Romeo, and I use that term very broadly, has killed our Juliet. That’s the final act of this play. This was a tragedy. There was nothing lighthearted about this.”

Chambers, 25, was shot as she cowered behind her mother, who was arguing face to face with Jones on April 11, 2011, in a bedroom at 2566 Lagena in South Memphis.

The couple had been dating about a year, but witnesses said Chambers stayed in the relationship only because she feared Jones would harm her if she tried to leave.

The defendant told jurors his 9mm pistol discharged as the mother, Berthine Chambers, tried to wrestle it from his hand.

He said he did not mean to kill his girlfriend, although he admitted he was angry with her because he could not find the $1,000 in cash they had saved together.

His attorney, Juni Ganguli, acknowledged the emotional nature of much of the testimony that jurors heard during the trial, but reminded them of the classic Harper Lee novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” in which attorney Atticus Finch urges a jury and, later, an angry mob, to use reason and not act on emotions.

Ganguli argued that witnesses were inconsistent or contradictory in describing the couple’s relationship, and that there was no medical evidence to support testimony that Jones beat Chambers on the head with his pistol.

Prosecutor Jones countered that defendant Jones was unwilling to accept any testimony from witnesses that put him in an unfavorable light.

“He says everyone is lying,” the prosecutor told jurors. “Every fact someone else says, Darius Jones says the exact opposite. Black is white, night is day.”

Jones, who was convicted of murder in the perpetration of a kidnapping, a form of first-degree murder, will be sentenced later by Judge Lee Coffee for convictions of especially aggravated kidnapping, two counts of aggravated kidnapping and reckless endangerment.

The kidnapping counts stem from Jones’ confinement of Chambers at gunpoint and then briefly holding her two young children at gunpoint when police arrived.