Jury deliberations continue Thursday in the trial of a U.S. Army soldier accused of killing two men and causing the death of his cousin in a shootout at a New Year’s Eve party in 2018.
Tevin Biles-Thomas, 26, is charged with multiple counts of murder, voluntary manslaughter and felonious assault in the deaths of DelVaunte Johnson, Toshaun Banks and his cousin Devaughn Gibson. He also faces a perjury charge that accuses him of lying to the grand jury by telling them he didn’t have a gun and that he didn’t know Gibson had died in the shooting until the next day.
He faces life in prison if convicted of murder.
Jurors began deliberating at the end of the day Wednesday after closing arguments in the case that hinges a still photo of security video showing Biles-Thomas entering the party and the testimony of two people who said he fired a weapon inside: Macquise Lewis and Jozette Brown.
No DNA, forensics or ballistics evidence tied Biles-Thomas to the shooting. Brown and Lewis pointing to the photo of Biles-Thomas and saying he was the shooter is the linchpin of the state’s theory that Biles-Thomas opened fire on Johnson and Banks after Johnson shoved Gibson against a refrigerator. Johnson returned fire before Biles-Thomas killed him and Banks, and Gibson died in the crossfire, prosecutors posited.
Prosecutors asked jurors to convicted Biles-Thomas of murder, but also told them they could find him guilty of voluntary manslaughter if they thought that Johnson and Banks provoked him to commit the shooting in a sudden fit of passion or rage.
‘I heard about it, I sure as heck lied about it’
Both Brown and Lewis gave differing descriptions of the shooter’s clothing from when they first spoke to police to when they took the stand. Brown, who suffered a gunshot in the arm, told police she did not see the shooter’s face but saw him pull a gun out of the pocket of a black “swooshy” jacket with a hood. She also said he was wearing gold-rimmed glasses. It was after police showed her Biles-Thomas in the security video walking into the party with what appeared to be a blue jacket that she said the shooter was wearing a blue jacket, defense attorneys said.
She said on the stand on Friday that she knew the shooter was Biles-Thomas after seeing his picture in a news story about his arrest.
Lewis, who admitted to stealing the gun that his friend Johnson used in the shooting from the scene and throwing it in Lake Erie, testified as part of a plea deal that saw prosecutors drop a felony charge to a misdemeanor in exchange for his testimony. He initially told police the shooter had on a light blue jean jacket, gold glasses and Timberland boots.
He said in court Tuesday that he was drunk and high on marijuana at the party when he heard gunshots ring out from behind him. He turned around and saw Biles-Thomas shooting Johnson and Banks. Lewis also said that he “may have been wrong” in his description of the jacket as blue, but maintained that Biles-Thomas was the shooter because he was the only person at the party wearing Timberland boots.
But when challenged under cross-examination that he did not see Biles-Thomas shoot and was going off of what authorities told him, Lewis said, “I guess so.” He also admitted that he lied to the police throughout the case but maintained he was telling the truth on the stand. Video from the security camera outside the party also showed that eight people were wearing Timberland boots that night, and multiple people had gold-rimmed glasses.
Biles-Thomas’ defense attorney Joe Patituce also showed that the security camera mounted outside the apartment made items appear to be blue when they were not, and said that Biles-Thomas was not actually wearing a blue jacket that night. Investigators never found the jacket, and its true color remained unknown.
“The state’s case is boiled down to this – I heard about it, and I sure as heck lied about it,” Patituce told jurors Tuesday during closing arguments. “Are you going to trust an admitted liar, or are you going to trust the soldier?”
‘Is that a leader?’
Prosecutors focused much of their closing arguments Wednesday on Biles-Thomas’ actions after the shooting, arguing that they didn’t make sense. He left his cousin at the party, drove his other friend home, dropped him off, and then drove back to Georgia the next day to prepare for upcoming training at his Army base.
Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Greg Mussman played jurors a video clip from Biles-Thomas’ interrogation with Cleveland police homicide detective Aaron Reese. Reese, who is now a sergeant, asked Biles-Thomas if the people who shot his cousin should be held accountable, and Biles-Thomas replied, “I don’t really know right now.”
“Is that a leader? Is that a soldier? Or is that someone that already knows the answer,” Mussman told jurors. “The person that killed Devaughn Gibson was DelVaunte Johnson, and he was already held accountable because, within two feet, he got shot in the head five times.”
The admission that Johnson killed Gibson came despite prosecutors having charged Biles-Thomas with murdering Gibson by purposely causing his death.
Prosecutors also noted that when Reese used a common police tactic to elicit confessions during interrogations and lied to Biles-Thomas, saying he had surveillance video from inside the apartment that showed the shooting, Biles-Thomas perked up and asked to see it.
‘You cannot hurt this soldier’
Patituce presented several alternative theories to the shooting. He said Brown’s initial description of the shooter’s jacket was consistent with Johnson, who was wearing a black windbreaker with a hood when police arrived and found his body. He also told jurors it was possible that the attack on Gibson was a coordinated “set up” by members of the Muddy gang, and that Johnson could have shot Gibson while he had him pinned up against the fridge and the shooter — who he maintained was not Biles-Thomas — responded to that.
Patituce said that Biles-Thomas “abso-freaking-lutely” wanted to see the video that Reese said he had because Biles-Thomas wanted to know what happened to his cousin.
“Somehow we’ve gone from ‘I want to know what happened,’ to ‘he has to be guilty because Jozette read about it, Macquise lied about it, and that man did not act the way the state of Ohio deems appropriate,’” Patituce said as he pointed to Biles-Thomas.
He then told the jury, “you cannot hurt this soldier.”
Count dismissed
Closing arguments came after Synenberg earlier on Wednesday dismissed one count of felonious assault that Biles-Thomas faced in the shooting of Brown for lack of evidence and barred prosecutors from using Biles-Thomas’ search history showing he checked WOIO Channel 19 a few hours after the shooting as evidence that he lied about not knowing his cousin had died.
Synenberg noted that prosecutors had not introduced evidence to show that Gibson was dead when Biles-Thomas logged onto the website or that he saw a news story that reported that Gibson was shot.
Synenberg dismissed the felonious assault count against Brown because she previously told jurors they could not use Brown’s identification of Biles-Thomas as the shooter as evidence, leaving the only person who said that Biles-Thomas shot her as Lewis. Synenberg then ran through all of Lewis’ credibility issues, including his intoxication, differing descriptions of the shooter’s clothes, favorable plea deals and admission that he was testifying as to what he was told.
“This is the sole witness who identifies the shooter, and the state believes it’s his credibility that carries a conviction,” Synenberg said.
___
© 2021 Advance Local Media LLC
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
