Did three alleged Bloods rob and kill one of their own? A Columbus jury must decide

A jury now must decide whether three suspects allegedly connected to the Bloods street gang are guilty of conspiring to rob and kill one of their own last year at Double Churches Road Park.

The jury will have to make that decision based largely on text messages prosecutors say the defendants exchanged on June 15, 2016, the day Demonde Donya Dicks Jr. was shot through the back of the head around 3 p.m. at the park’s basketball court.

Besides determining whether Jacquawn Clark, Derain Waller and A’keveius Powell are guilty of murder and armed robbery, jurors also must judge whether the three committed the crime to further the interest of the Bloods gang or to improve their standing in it, violating Georgia’s gang prevention act.

For almost six hours Wednesday, attorneys in their closing arguments went back over the evidence in the murder trial, with very different conclusions.

The prosecution said the texts the three traded that day were particularly damning, proving the defendants intended to kill Dicks to get $40,000 they believed he got in a drug deal and carried in a backpack. The defense said jurors can’t convict people of murder based solely on text messages open to interpretation.

“We don’t convict people because of words. We convict people because of actions,” said defense attorney William Kendrick, who with partner Mark Shelnutt represents Waller.

Susan Henderson, who represents Powell, said only the person sending a text truly knows what it’s supposed to mean. Anyone else would have to “get inside the sender’s head,” she said: “You cannot know what someone intends in a text.”

Clark’s attorney Jennifer Curry told jurors young people today have their own peculiar online lexicon that others can’t decipher: “They don’t spell out words anymore,” she said, and what they use in place of words can have different meanings.

Senior Assistant District Attorney Don Kelly said what the suspects meant in their texts is clear from the context and the actions that followed, and from what Clark later told police: First they plotted to rob and kill Dicks, and then they did.

The text messages

Authorities believe Dicks also was in the Bloods, but in a separate subset from the defendants. He was in a set called “Sex Money Murder,” based in Atlanta, prosecutors said.

That Wednesday he caught a shuttle from the Atlanta airport to the Groome Transportation terminal off Fortson Road in north Columbus, arriving at 11:40 a.m. Surveillance video showed him carrying a black backpack.

Phone records show he called Clark, who came to pick him up about an hour later. They drove first to the Publix supermarket at 3201 Macon Road, where they picked up a $40 money order Clark needed to buy gas for the black Chevy Monte Carlo he had borrowed from a grandfather. Video showed them leaving the store at 1:13 p.m.

Then they went to a Family Dollar store on Floyd Road, and went inside at 1:28 p.m. to buy plastic wrap. Video there showed they were at the checkout when Dicks abruptly left, talking on his cell phone, while Clark completed the transaction.

Clark later told police that when he went outside, Dicks was in the parking lot talking to someone in a white Chevy Camaro. Dicks gave the plastic wrap to the car’s occupants, and took some money he put in his backpack, Clark told officers.

Then they went to Bull Creek Apartments on Woodruff Farm Road to pick up Waller, Clark’s cousin, and stopped somewhere near Dawson Street and Cusseta Road to buy marijuana.

At 1:43 p.m., Waller sent a text to Powell, who was home at Walden Pond Apartments, 7840 Moon Road. “Diz man got 40 bands,” read the text. “He a murder homie. Gimme the green light.”

Prosecutors said “40 bands” means $40,000.

“Green light shawty,” Powell replied a minute later.

Kelly told jurors the meaning is clear: “Everybody knows what ‘green light’ means. It means ‘go.’”

Waller and Powell exchanged more texts as Powell tried to determine Dicks’ identity. Waller told Powell he didn’t know Dicks’ name: “He with Sosa,” he texted, using Clark’s street name.

To communicate without Powell overhearing them in the car, Clark and Waller also exchanged texts.

“Let me do him,” Waller texted Clark at 1:45 p.m., to which Clark replied, “I’m ‘a let ya. Got to set it up tho. I’m supposed to be rollin’.”

At 1:47 p.m., Clark texted Waller, “Got to kill him tho,” to which Waller replied “IK” for “I know.”

Again Kelly told jurors Wednesday that the meaning is obvious: “This isn’t a theory. This isn’t my interpretation. Everyone knows what ‘kill’ means.”

The last text between Clark and Waller was at 2:29 p.m., when Clark swore on his 2-year-old daughter’s name that he would set Dicks up: ““By (child’s name) I’m gonna set it back up.”

Dicks had planned to go back to Groome to catch a shuttle home. Instead he, Clark and Waller went the park, about a mile from the Groome terminal, to smoke marijuana.

That’s where Waller shot Dicks from behind, and Clark and Waller grabbed the backpack, ran to the Monte Carlo and drove to Walden Pond Apartments to rendezvous with Powell, said Kelly, who said the consistent pattern of the texts shows the suspects’ intent: “It’s a constant flow of ‘we’re going to rob this guy.’”

The defense responds

Curry told the jury her client repeatedly tried to back out of the scheme, texting Waller that he needed more time to think, and that Dicks’ Atlanta gang associates would hold him responsible.

That three Bloods would assassinate one of their own made no sense, Curry said: “How do you further the interest of a gang by killing one of the gang members?”

She said Clark was so shocked after the shooting that he left the Monte Carlo at Walden Pond Apartments and had his mother come pick him up. When he told her what happened, she drove him back to the park to talk to the police. That evening he told investigators Waller shot Dicks.

Though prosecutors used emails and Facebook images as evidence of Clark’s affiliation with the Bloods, Curry said Clark had other interests to pursue last year: “At this point in time, Mr. Clark is enrolled in college. He has a 2-year-old daughter.” Pointing to an image from the store video, she noted Clark wasn’t wearing the Bloods’ signature red color: “He was a college student wearing a black and white polo shirt and some jeans.”

Kendrick emphasized evidence the police did not have: no fingerprints, no blood splatter, no murder weapon, no gunshot residue, no DNA samples, no witnesses to say they saw the suspects kill Dicks, no proof of a drug deal or of its proceeds.

And no backpack: “We don’t know whether this bag was on Mr. Dicks’ person when this happened,” Kendrick said.

He faulted police for not having more evidence tested at the crime lab, particularly a cigarette butt found by Dicks’ body. A forensic biologist with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation lab in Decatur testified the saliva a cigarette absorbs provides significant DNA evidence.

Kelly addressed that in his closing, saying the cigarette butt was a Newport; it was on the ground right by Dicks’ hand; and Dicks had a pack of Newports in his pocket. The reasonable conclusion is that it was Dicks’ cigarette, he said.

Kendrick said authorities don’t know whose cigarette it was, because it wasn’t tested: “You have to exclude every reasonable hypothesis,” he said. “Is it reasonable to test the items that are recovered?”

He also faulted investigators for not further pursuing Clark’s account of a drug deal involving a white Camaro outside the Family Dollar.

“It’s important to find out what’s going on with the white Camaro,” he said, noting that Dicks’ cell phone had a message from someone called “Snowman” and that Clark told detectives Dicks had been “touching the white,” apparently referring to cocaine, sometimes called “snow.”

Said Kendrick: “We’re talking about ‘touching the white.’ We’re not talking about Frosty the Snowman.”

Henderson, representing Powell, said almost all the evidence prosecutors presented had nothing to do with her client, who was never with Dicks that day.

Walden Pond Apartments was just a convenient spot for Clark and Waller to leave the black Monte Carlo witnesses saw them leave the park in, she said: “They needed a place to ditch that car.”

She noted the cell phone that police said belonged to Powell was not in his name – it was in his mother’s name – and anyone could have been using it. “Cell phones are very transient things,” she said.

Again echoing Kendrick’s argument that texts are insufficient evidence on which to base a guilty verdict, she said: “You can’t convict somebody on speculation. … You cannot convict on words alone.”

With their closing arguments concluded, attorneys Thursday will await the verdict after Judge William Rumer instructs jurors on the law by which they must weigh the evidence.

If convicted, each defendant faces up to life in prison.

This story was originally published October 25, 2017 at 5:59 PM with the headline "Did three alleged Bloods rob and kill one of their own? A Columbus jury must decide."