TNB - 2nd man guilty in '00 murder
Nigger Forger
tribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060318/NEWS01/603180326/1002
Lisa Glancy stood before the jury Friday morning and held up two pictures.
One was of Rodney Duckworth as he lay comatose days before his death. The
other was of Mike White, shot in the arm and meant for dead.
"Rodney Duckworth was murdered on Sept. 30, 2000, by Nojir Jeffries. He
also attempted to murder Mike White," she said.
The Grant County deputy prosecutor then marched to the defense table and
stood just feet from the object of her attention.
She pointed squarely at Bryson Matthews, who sat leaning back in his
chair.
"But, ladies and gentlemen, we have proven to you beyond a reasonable
doubt that Nojir Jeffries could not have accomplished that without this
man."
Over the course of her closing argument, she rattled off a litany of ways
- 14 in all - that Matthews, 25, had helped Jeffries unleash a torrent of
bullets at Duckworth and White. Matthews may not have pulled the trigger,
she argued, but by driving the car, following White's vehicle, slowing
down and speeding up at exactly the right moments, Matthews is as legally
culpable as if he'd held the .380-caliber gun and fired the rounds
himself.
"Bryson Matthews knew exactly what he was doing," she said. "He understood
exactly what he needed to do to help Nojir Jeffries."
After about five hours of deliberations, the jury agreed Friday,
convicting Matthews of murder and attempted murder in connection with the
shootings.
As the verdict was read shortly before 4 p.m., Matthews remained calm,
speaking briefly to his defense attorney, Joe Keith Lewis, before being
ushered out of the courtroom into a waiting elevator by a gaggle of Grant
County sheriff's deputies and Marion police officers.
As Glancy and Prosecutor James Luttrull Jr. accepted the congratulations
of a thankful crowd of family and police, the mother of Matthews' children
and his fiancee, Jacari Barney, wept silently, alone in the back row of
the courtroom, later fiercely embracing Lewis for support.
Matthews will be sentenced April 7 on both charges.
Earlier in the day, Lewis argued that the prosecutors were making
assumptions that didn't fit the evidence.
"What lawyers do in the courtroom is what political hacks do for
politicians - they put spin on it," he said.
Lewis told the jury, made up of seven women and five men (one of whom was
black), that Matthews was an unwitting component of Jeffries' plan to
exact revenge on White for an earlier argument.
Throughout the trial, which began Monday with jury selection, Lewis had
attempted to paint a picture of his client as a devoted friend, incapable
of saying "no" to Jeffries' domineering personality.
"One thing that's clear is that you're not going to cross a guy with a
gun, and Nojir's the one with the gun," he said to the jury. "... This is
Nojir's show."
Jeffries earlier pleaded guilty to murder and attempted murder charges and
was sentenced to 65 years in prison for those crimes.
"I was disappointed. I don't know what else to say," Lewis said late
Friday afternoon. "A case like this, you get to know your client, his
family, and it breaks your heart."
Luttrull, speaking from his office as the late-afternoon sun bathed the
Courthouse Square, said the community could take a message from the
verdicts.
"It's a positive for the community because a murder in our town does not
go unpunished. Even though it took a long time, it did come together.
"We still work cases," he continued. "We knew this would be solved. We're
not going to give up on people and unsolved murder cases."