6-Minute Verdict: Guilty

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by Melissa Bailey | Mar 26, 2010 6:51 am

(24) Comments | Commenting has been closed | E-mail the Author

Posted to: Legal Writes

Melissa Bailey Photo As a jury handed down a swift decision that could put Markease Hill away for life, his family reeled and one eyewitness grappled with regret.

Six minutes after entering the deliberation room Thursday, a 12-person jury emerged with a verdict. It found Hill guilty on all four counts in his double-murder trial.

The quick unanimity came after five and a half days of testimony and one full hour of instructions from Judge Joan Alexander. (Read about days one, two, three and four, and five of the trial in Superior Court on Church Street.)

“Their mind was already made up,” concluded Hope Brodie, one of Hill’s supporters and a witness for the defense. She’s pictured above at center, consoling Hill’s mom.

Defense Attorney Tom Farver said Thursday’s was the fastest verdict he has ever seen in 25 years of criminal trials.

“It’s very disappointing,” Farver said. “It just seems unlikely that they gave full attention to the evidence in so short a time.”

Hill was convicted of murdering two men, Ensley Myrick and Joey Reed, outside the Catwalk strip club on June 11, 2008. The jury found Hill guilty of two counts of murder, one count of capital felony murder for killing multiple people, and carrying a pistol without a permit.

Judge Alexander found him guilty of a fifth count, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. She will decide his prison sentence at a May 21 court date. The maximum sentence is life in prison without parole.

Myrick, 25, of East Haven, and Reed, 27, of North Branford, were best friends—“like brothers,” the families have said. Members of the families showed up diligently to each day of the trial, shedding tears most days. After the trial, they walked away arm in arm. They declined comment.

Hill’s brother-in-law, who declined to give his name, offered his sympathy to the families.

“We’re sorry for their loss,” he said, “but my brother didn’t have nothing to do with it.”

“Baggage”

With no gun recovered, no videotape of the crime, and no fingerprints left by the shooter, the state’s case relied heavily on the testimony of five witnesses—witnesses who were hanging out next to a strip club at 1:30 a.m., and had all been drinking and doing various drugs.

Four of them, three of Hill’s associates and one of the victim’s friends, ID’d Hill as the shooter.

The witnesses brought complications to the stand. All five had criminal records. Two admitted lying under oath. One testified as part of a trade with the state for reduced prison time.

In closing remarks, state prosecutor Kevin Doyle admitted his witnesses had “inconsistencies.” But he urged jurors to focus on a central fact they agreed on: “They all saw one shooter, one gun.” And most important, four ID’d Hill as the triggerman.

Doyle showed jurors slides of the victims’ bullet wounds.

Hill “shot both of them in the head at close range and left them to die in their own blood,” Doyle told the jurors. A couple shed tears as he spoke.

In an hour-long closing statement, Farver urged the jury to set aside emotions and turn to logic. He asked them to carefully review the holes in witnesses’ testimony. He reviewed the inconsistencies and, in some cases, outright lies. When a person gets a little fact wrong, or tells a lie on a separate topic, it can implicate their credibility on the important stuff, he argued. He said none stands up as a reliable source of the truth.

After the swift deliberations, Farver doubted the jurors heeded his advice.

“I’m very concerned that with the severity of the charges, and the baggage that the state’s witnesses brought to the table, that people overlooked the credibility question,” said Farver (pictured).

Hill’s sister, Keena Dixon, agreed.

She said the jury should have been more skeptical of one key witness, who grew up with Hill in Fair Haven’s Quinnipiac Terrace projects. He was facing a maximum of 150 years in prison on five separate narcotics cases and a domestic violence case when he agreed to make a deal with the state: If he told the truth at the Hill trial, he’d be let out on bond, and would serve only six years in prison.

On the stand, he also admitted to lying under oath because he was mad at a cop.

Prosecutor Doyle acknowledged the witness’s baggage. But, he asked the jury, did the witness have a motive to falsely accuse his longtime friend? Did any other witnesses have a motive to do so?

Even if jurors dismissed the witness’s testimony, they’d have three more witnesses to peg Hill as the killer.

While physical evidence alone did not peg Hill as the shooter, Doyle argued, jurors could use it to corroborate parts of witnesses’ accounts, such as where the shooter was standing, and which direction the bullets flew.

“Happy Juries Convict”

How were jurors so quickly convinced?

They could not be reached for this story. A number of theories swirled around court.

From day one, the jurors appeared to get along very well. Each time they’d go into the deliberation room to wait for court to begin, giggles would spill out into the courtroom. One sunny afternoon, 10 jurors headed off for lunch together down Church Street.

“Happy juries convict,” noted one observer early in the trial, upon hearing jovial sounds from the jury room. They’re more comfortable upholding the state’s findings, the theory goes.

At 3:30 p.m. Thursday, the 12 jurors entered a deliberation room off the side of the courtroom. They sat around a table with windows facing Church Street. On the table sat a box of Cheez-Its.

At 3:31 p.m., official deliberations began. To protect their privacy, the judge ordered the courtroom cleared.

The verdict came out at 3:37 p.m.—six minutes, according to court officials.

If the jurors used a half-hour break to start deliberations early, against the instructions of the judge, that would have given them 36 minutes to deliberate.

Court resumed, and the jury read the verdict decision at 4:03 p.m. The decision came so quickly that most of Hill’s supporters didn’t make it back to the courtroom in time. Keena Dixon, whose first name is tattooed on her brother’s forearm, was one of only a few family members present. She broke out in tears when the foreperson answered “guilty” to the first count.

“Love you!” she called out as he was placed in handcuffs and taken into a side room.

“Love you!” he called back.

Hill, who’s 35, has spent most of his adult life in prison. He already served 16 years in prison for a 1991 gangland shooting in a Fair Haven barber shop. He was out from prison less than a year before he was arrested again, when he led cops on a chase that ended in a crash in Meriden—then picked up the murder charges.

Peers

For some, the racial dynamics of the case could not be ignored.

The case involved cross-racial violence. The defendant is black. The victims were white.

That divide was reflected in the audience: A mostly black audience sat on two benches to the left, behind Hill, and a mostly white crowd of victims’ families sat to the right, nearest to the jury.

The race of the jury, mostly white, added to that divide.

From day one of the trial, Hill’s supporters were skeptical the jury would give him a fair shake. Some formed that opinion the moment the jury filed in the door.

“One black person?” counted Hill’s uncle in disbelief. At the final tally, there were two black women, four white men and six white women on the jury.

“He lost already,” remarked 27-year-old William Grear upon getting his first glimpse of the group that would determine his friend’s fate.

Hill grew up in New Haven public housing. The jurors were mostly white, middle-aged, and looked like they hailed from the suburbs, Grear reckoned.

Did he get a “jury of his peers,” as the law calls for?

Defense attorney Farver said he had no reason to believe jurors were anything but race-neutral in their judgments and opinions.

He outlined the challenges of seating a jury that would look more like Hill’s peer group—young minorities who can relate to his experience.

During two and a half weeks of jury selection, a lot of minority potential jurors were dismissed from the case, for good reason, he said. A couple knew the defendant. Some knew witnesses or the circumstances of the case.

For most, the issue was financial—a murder trial can mean missing over a week of work. The state pays jurors only $50 per day, and only for the first week of the trial. And there’s a delay before the state issues jury duty checks.

In a recession, a lot of people are struggling to pay their bills, and can’t make that financial sacrifice, Farver said. Blue-collared workers tend to request dismissal because their employers won’t pay them for the days they miss. Middle-aged jurors with more stable jobs are more likely to be compensated for their missed time.

Another factor: New Haven’s judicial district stretches far beyond the borders of the city. Jury pools are drawn from voter registration and driver’s license databases in New Haven, East Haven, North Haven, Hamden, Woodbridge, Bethany, Cheshire, Meriden, Wallingford, North Branford, Branford, Guilford and Madison.

One young African-American woman from Meriden made it onto the jury, but backed out at the last minute. The woman, who’s 22, didn’t show up the first day. When the court called her, she said she had car trouble and would be unable to attend the trial.

The final slate did not sit well with Hill’s sister, Keena Dixon.

“It was written before it happened,” she said. “It just wasn’t fair at all ... They just wanted somebody guilty for the crime.”

Prosecutors could not be reached for comment for this story.

‘B” Court

Farver called the small courtroom—“B Court”—“unfortunate.”

In the cramped quarters of Courtroom 5B, the jurors sat close to the victims’ families. At the sound of a sniffle, they looked over to see family members console each other.

“The judge said sympathy is not to play a part,” Farver said, but “we’re all human.”

Even when the trial was upgraded to the slightly more spacious Courtroom 4A, the Department of Corrections officers assigned to monitor Hill were unable to be inconspicuous because of the court’s small size, Farver noted. Jurors aren’t supposed to see handcuffs, leg shackles or DOC officers, because it may bias them against the defendant.

“It was a very physically poor layout,” Farver said. “Those courts are not designed to hold a murder trial.”

Would he take the case to “A” court, so to speak, through an appeal?

Farver, a private lawyer in Hamden, was assigned to the case as a special public defender, acting on behalf of the public defender’s office. He said he believes there are several issues that came up in the trial that warrant review by a higher court. The public defender’s office would make the call as to whether an appeal is filed, he said.

Foggy Memory

Another challenge of the trial was that the witnesses had all been doing drugs on the night of the crime. Together, the state’s witnesses ingested tequila, cocaine, marijuana, Heineken, “snake bites,” and maybe even a cocktail from Tommy’s booze stand, depending on whom you ask.

The issue did not appear to give jurors significant pause.

However, it left Hope Brodie with lingering regret.

Brodie testified for the defense. She said she was across the street at the time of the shootings. She said she dived into a car when she heard the shots. She didn’t see the shooting, but she contended Hill didn’t do it.

“He’s an innocent man,” she maintained after court.

She admitted she had had alcohol, angel’s dust and ecstasy pills that night. She didn’t know what was happening. “If I really been there,” she said, she could have been a better witness and maybe exonerate her friend.

“If I wasn’t so fucking high,” she said, “I could have changed somebody’s life.”

Comments

posted by: Story on March 26, 2010 7:23am

Excellent coverage. Certainly raises concerns about not just this trial, but our entire judicial system. I know there will be people who will post about Hill’s family being racist, but having a jury of your peers is crucial to a fair trial. If something isn’t done to make juries more diverse you’ve got one race continually judging everyone else. The fact is the jurers were probably unaware of any bias they might have had, but 6 minutes of deliberation is outrageous for a case of this severity. I don’t know from following this story if he’s guilty or not, but if what the jury was looking for was a shadow of a doubt, not only did they overlook some major shadows, they didn’t even seem to take the time to consider them. This is judicial system failure plain and simple and another person of color is on his way to jail.

posted by: Steve on March 26, 2010 8:07am

Seems a little far-fetched to accuse the jury of being racist in convicting a career criminal. Were all the previous juries that convicted him equally racist?

posted by: missy on March 26, 2010 9:28am

story…ur absolutely right! I agree 100%. steve, if you know anything about law and juries, you would know that to find someone guilty there’s only one thing the STATE has to prove…guilt WITHOUT REASONABLE DOUBT! There’s too much reasonable doubt in all of the witnesses and their testimonies. And whether or not they looked at all the evidence, no matter what color they are, althought the jury is supposed to consist of your peers, 6 minutes is not hardly enough time to return a verdict og guilty OR not guilty. They need to file for an appeal. If you figure he looks like or he could’ve did it; that’s doubt. You can’t convict off of doubt. You have to be certain.

posted by: money on March 26, 2010 9:46am

two tha ones who think the jury was unfair and racist dnt comment atall unless you kno what the hell you are talkin about he was guilty 3 of his own friends said it was him and one of his own witnesses got caught out basically saying it was him so unless you know everything about this case or the family mind your business there were two black juries who could have had said something and made it go on longer than 5 min to decide but they clearly knew it was him he sat in that court room every day with an i dont give a f*ck attitude and smirked the whole time he had no shame in what he did and everyone clearly knew that so unless u kno everything dnt write anything he deserves to die just like any1 who has no heart to take not only one 2 peoples lives from them

posted by: front row and disgusted on March 26, 2010 9:53am

Couldn’t agree more Steve. I sat front row and witnessed for myself, (or maybe I’m just racist) hill rubbing the right side of his face with his middle finger. I even seen him look at the crime scene photos and turn back to grace us with a nasty smile. I’m sure that if we picked that up.. the twelve sets of eyeballs in front of us did too. That fast deliberation was entirely based on eyewitness testimony, and that thing’s demeanor. Please correct me if I’m wrong. Either way it works, he (the career criminal) was found guilty because he was. ANY MAN who has truly been wrongfully accused would at least take that stand and speak his piece. no? 6 mins. is completely acceptable. don’t talk about the labor just show me that baby! that sob showed zero compassion. zero sympathy. and he even had the balls to hard eye the witnesses, as if to intimidate them. does that sound like a innocent man? An innocent man may even give his condolences for the families loss. The guilty hill did not. The killer did not. I can call him that now cant I? his first two victims lived right? So he wasn’t technically a killer yet. Right? So lets let him take another shot at it. No pun intended. And as for the jury of HIS peers… yeah about that … NO. Could you imagine what the courtroom would have looked like full of HIS peers? It would be a friggen circus… again no pun intended. Justice has been served and it is definitely my pleasure to say another killer is on his way to jail.

posted by: Marianne on March 26, 2010 10:04am

I can’t help but notice the eerie similarity between the two men ordered to be released from jail after serving 16 years for a 1993 murder and this man’s trial. All were convicted on the testimony of questionable witnesses. Just sayin’

posted by: cba on March 26, 2010 10:05am

A six minute verdict for guilty is a quite a recommendation for the defense counsel

posted by: front row and disgusted on March 26, 2010 11:08am

what’s happening here.. are you not posting all of my comments? what happened to MY RIGHT to freedom of speech? and ya know after thinking about it for a minute.. it is quite asinine to assume that the jury may have been biased. all 12 of them. as if to say 1 evil corrupt racist ... influenced the rest. gimme a break. you people will reach for anything.

posted by: Tim on March 26, 2010 11:11am

Sick and tired of everything being about race. He was convicted plain and simple. Does it matter if the jury was all white or all black?

posted by: Tim on March 26, 2010 11:14am

Story - Another person of color is on the way to jail, because HE KILLED TWO PEOPLE!!

posted by: Doug on March 26, 2010 11:27am

Wow, six minutes. That’s not even time for coffee.

posted by: fingers on March 26, 2010 2:22pm

I love the last line. Thank you.

posted by: dirtyplayer on March 26, 2010 3:31pm

He is GUILTY says a jury of his peers that both councils agreed for a jury. That is a fact. These people weren;t picked off the street there is a jury selection process that must be done and it was . so quit the crying let the big man take his medicine and enjoy his cozy cell .For the rest of his life .

posted by: Juror1of12 on March 26, 2010 5:53pm

I can only tell you what I thought and what I saw. “Six minutes” is a bit misleading. While we were not allowed to discuss it with anyone we all sat through 6 days of evidence and argument. Lots of breaks, lunches and time at home to review and consider what we saw and heard. The first order of business as we were instructed was to have a vote. There was not a moment of hesitation by any juror. Peers? That can be debated if you like, but we had folks who lived and/or worked in New Haven, 2 black women as stated, and 1 juror who had a past drug conviction.
For me, while 3 of the witnesses knew each other, and may have influenced each other, the last witness did not associate with any of them and identified the same man. Either the 3 associates or the friend of the victims alone could have been doubted (be it bad memory, impairment or favors), together they formed a lock for me as it was two independent sources. Wait, but the guy said he was thin you say? Everyone remembers things slightly different, and if you look at the “tank top” photo which was closer in time to the shooting Mr. hill was thinner.
Am I racist? No.
Was I swayed by crying family? No.
Was I swayed by demeanor of Mr. Hill? No.
Facts. Plain and simple. I hope there is no tax money wasted on proving that in an appeal. The defense attorney did the best job I think he could given what he had to work with.
Oh, and yes, there were Cheezits on the table. Doritos, chocolate and more too. Try sitting in a room with 14 other people you don’t know and try not talking about the “Elephant in the room”. Thinks get weird and sometimes irreverent. If making the best of jury duty offended anyone, I apologize. When it came to considering the evidence and deciding the verdict, I, and I believe my fellow jurors, took it seriously.

posted by: V on March 28, 2010 8:35am

“a jury that would look more like Hill’s peer group—young minorities”

Is this how we construct juries now, in the liberal northeast? I cringe for our judicial system.

posted by: Equal Justice on March 28, 2010 4:58pm

I’m not saying that he didn’t commit this heinous crime but a jury of HIS peers would have been middle aged black males.If the jury did reflect his peers and he did get found not guilty or a hung jury, they would have said the jury was pro black but since it was a nearly all white jury,they were called"race-neutral”. Why are you race-neutral when you are white and pro black when you are not white. I have a problem with that…Last but not least if it was 2 young blacks murdered that day their criminal record would have been printed all thru theese papers, Did these white kids have a criminal past?

posted by: DIRTYPLAYER on March 28, 2010 8:02pm

Like i said in my last post .there is a jury selection process we must do AND IT WAS DONE .to the satisfaction of both the defense and prosecution.THAT is a A FACT .so let the big man take his medicine and in joy his cozy jail cell for the rest of his life . THE END .

posted by: Juror1of12 on March 29, 2010 12:00am

What is a jury of one’s peers? Okay, you want them middle-aged, because you assume everyone is age bias too? You want black, do you include Jamaicans, Dominicans, etc? Any generation African-American? Or do they have to be born here, or perhaps second or third generation? To be his peers, they would have to be gang members (current/former? Not sure what Mr. Hill’s current status is with the “Island Brothers”.) What about belonging to a rival gang then, that’s not a peer, it would have to be other Island Brothers? How far do you carry it? The jury represented a cross section of the populace. Why is there an assumption that everyone is bias toward people exactly like them and can’t be objective? (Reminder: Two black jurors, no hesitation on guilty verdicts. We needed unanimous decisions. But somehow we are still a racist jury?) (Note: I did not know of Mr. Hill’s gang or criminal past until after researching after the verdict).
The victim’s pasts do not matter. Their lives have the same value as yours and mine (and Mr. Hill’s for that matter) in the eyes of the law. And while the papers might have blasted out the criminal pasts of the victims, the jury wouldn’t see it regardless. We did hear about the criminal pasts of their two friends who witnessed. I haven’t seen any press on Mr. Myrick or Mr. Reed, except blogs mentioning that they were not pure, innocent gentlemen. I think we could assume they weren’t angels if they were driving intoxicated to a strip club at 1:30AM on a weeknight anyway.

posted by: Story on March 29, 2010 8:54am

I should clarify my earlier comment. My intention was not to say he was innocent or guilty in fact I made clear that I didn’t know. To juror 1 of 12 I didn’t mean to imply that jurors were racist, but we all have biases and it wasn’t just a matter of race, but also of class and societal position. All of that aside. Let say he was guilty for the sake of argument, and let’s say the jurors were all 100% objective in their judgement. The point still remains that our justice system is discredited and compromised when (as the defense attorney pointed out) there are structures in place that discourage people of color and low income workers from taking positions on juries. We are systematically denying low income people of color (who are disproportionately arrested and convicted for the same offenses Caucasian people are often given low to no punishment for) their right to a jury of their peers. Regardless of his guilt (which is not established till after a trial) or the jury’s bias (which I agree none of us have any reliable information on) the trial wasn’t fair. So you end up with a questionable verdict and continued lack of faith in our justice system. Whether both parties agreed to the jurors chosen is irrelevant since the juror pool was already compromised by the fact that a disproportionate number of low income individuals had already gotten out of jury duty due to financial concerns. That was my point in the earlier comment. Also, it’s the defendant’s constitutional right not to testify.
To Tim, I’m a black woman from the South and if you’re sick and tired of everything being about race, imagine how we feel.

posted by: Juror1of12 on March 29, 2010 10:40am

Story, I think you are simplifying the juror selection a little bit too. Many, many of my middle class working peers were telling me how they got out of jury duty and my management, I could tell, was not happy about me sitting on a case. There certainly weren’t any “well-off” folks on the jury. I don’t know all the jobs the folks had, but we did have at least one unemployed, one custodian, one who worked at a retail store, a couple nurses/medical techs, a couple who worked in IT and one guy who worked two jobs as a driver. Jury duty isn’t easy on anyone.
Our decision was made on the facts and the belief in witness testimony. I’m not sure where the bias would have come in play here. I didn’t believe the white witnesses more because they were white. I totally disregarded one because I thought he was lying out of fear, and believe the other one because he appeared not to be and was not an associate of Mr. Hill and would have no ulterior motive to pin it on him.
Now to your black southern woman everything about race comment. It’s a tricky situation. Yes, blacks have historically been poorly treated. However, everyone is dealt an unfair hand. It’s up to each person to do the best with what they have. To fall back on any crutch and blame society is wasted energy. People are treated differently based on their age, weight, height, sex and whether they have a full head of hair or not.
BTW - Would you vote to increase taxes to pay jurors more money?

posted by: Steve Ross, Human on March 29, 2010 11:11am

“‘a jury that would look more like Hill’s peer group—young minorities’

Is this how we construct juries now, in the liberal northeast?”

No, obviously.

posted by: juror1of12 on March 29, 2010 11:49am

Story,
Let me back up a little. I don’t mean to belittle your point at all. First, I’ll take on your word that statistics show what you claim. Let’s first clear up a misconception about statistics that gets stepped on by journalists and marketing folks every day. Statistics prove only correlation, not cause and effect. Have we examined all possible causes or just leapt upon the one we want to believe?
Next, let’s say we do enough research and believe it is because juries aren’t made up of lower income peers, how do we remedy that? Just saying it’s unfair and it needs to be fixed is easy. What are the options to fix the problem?

posted by: NewHavenerToo on March 30, 2010 7:33pm

Front Row and Disgusted:

New Haven Independent does NOT post all comments, just the ones they feel like publishing.

[Editor’s note: See our guidelines here: ]http://newhavenindependent.org/index.php/site_policies/]

posted by: Juror1of12 on March 31, 2010 11:25am

FR&D,
Your right of free speech does not extend to a privately held newspaper.
Now theoretically they should only be not posting offensive of hateful posts. But they can do what they want. I understand from a person who works at the Hartford Current that their content is now reviewed by their new owner FOXCT and they are frequently told to change things based on something more akin to political leanings than fact.
I do notice it takes a while for the “moderator” to put up posts after I submit them. Let’s see if this post makes it through after I just commented on the speed of the person reviewing this post…

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