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Home > Blogs > Dayton Courts: Legal and crime news > Archives > 2012 > January > 18 > Entry
Bootleg joint homicide case goes to the jury
DAYTON — The case of Keron D. Simpson, the first of three men to go on trial for a bootleg liquor joint robbery that left two people dead, went to the jury Thursday, one week after the trial started.
Closing arguments started about 1 p.m., and the jury got the case just before 4 p.m.
Simpson, 20, is charged with 12 counts of aggravated robbery, one for each of the people present when he and two others robbed the liquor joint at 1564 Germantown St. on Nov. 14, 2010. He is also charged with two counts of murder, for the deaths of two of those victims: Earnest “Hank” Sanders, 59, and Michelle Carter, 31.
During her closing argument, assistant Montgomery County prosecutor Lynda Dodd said that Simpson shot Sanders, who had been operating the after-hours liquor joint from his home for more than 30 years. A different person shot Carter, but Simpson was still responsible, as he was participating in a robbery with that person, she said.
“He is a complicitor,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s his gun, his bullet in her head.
Sanders died at a hospital. Carter died at the scene.
“Michelle never had a chance,” Dodd said.
Simpson’s co-defendants, Daviontae T. Norvell, 19, and Earl L. Moon, 20, will be tried separately before the same judge, common pleas court Judge Michael L. Tucker, later this year.
Simpson did not call any witnesses. Bobby Joe Cox, Simpson’s defense attorney, said that the prosecution only presented three of the 10 surviving victims. All three admitted they had been drinking at the time of the robbery, and one had been using cocaine, he said.
Cox also raised concerns about the photo lineup that helped identify Simpson as a suspect.
But assistant county prosecutor Tracey Ballard Tangeman said that Simpson’s DNA had been found on two beer bottles discovered at the scene, in the exact place where witnesses said he had been seated prior to the robbery.
“Science corroborated their identifications,” Tangeman said. “So where’s the leap of faith in believing the witnesses when even science is corroborating it.”
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