Prosecution remains in murder trial of ex-Miami player Rashaun Jones

MIAMI — Prosecutors rested their case in opposition to former Miami Hurricanes soccer player Rashaun Jones on Wednesday after presenting 21 witnesses in an try to show that Jones had each a gun and a motive to kill teammate Bryan Pata and was notably lacking from a compulsory crew assembly on the evening of the murder.

Attorneys for Jones supplied a solution to all of the circumstantial proof jurors heard via five days of testimony however couldn’t rebut the video recorded testimony of an eyewitness who twice recognized Jones because the individual leaving the scene of the taking pictures.

The protection was not anticipated to current further witnesses, and jurors are set to start deliberating Thursday.

Recorded testimony that former University of Miami writing teacher Paul Conner gave in 2022 was maybe essentially the most bracing testimony of the trial to this point. The day after the taking pictures, Conner informed police that across the time of the slaying, he noticed a person leaving the condominium parking zone the place Pata died, and he later picked Jones out of a police lineup.

The 9 jurors sat at rapt consideration Monday whereas watching the video, particularly when assistant state lawyer Kristen Rodriguez confirmed the jury two printed photographs. One was a forensic artist’s sketch primarily based on Conner’s description days after the taking pictures. The different: a six-image picture lineup, together with an image of Jones that Conner picked out in 2007 and once more in 2020, when investigators visited him in Ohio as they reviewed the case.

Conner was the witnesses who prosecutors and police, in their pleadings to make use of the 2022 recording in trial, informed a choose was probably useless final yr. ESPN reporters subsequently discovered Conner alive and residing in Louisville, Kentucky, but with vital reminiscence points that the choose decided made him unable to testify in individual.

Jones, 40, has remained in custody for the previous 4½ years amid courtroom delays and adjustments in attorneys on each side. He has maintained his innocence all through, declining a pretrial plea deal of 15 years in jail with credit score for time served. He faces as much as life in jail if convicted of second-degree murder.

Jurors additionally heard from Jones on Tuesday through a recording of his interview with Miami-Dade Detective Juan Segovia on the day of Jones’ arrest in August 2021. Segovia testified that there was a “lot of bad blood” between the 2 gamers and that Jones had lied about his whereabouts and actions the evening of the killing.

Teammates have acknowledged, with various levels of specificity, that there was pressure between Jones and Pata over Pata’s girlfriend, Jada Brody, who had beforehand been in a sexual relationship with Jones. The state didn’t name Brody to testify.

In the recorded interview, Jones informed Segovia he may perceive how his historical past with Pata may look suspicious however he had “nothing to do with him dying.”

He stated there have been some verbal spats between them over Brody, and he admitted to getting right into a bodily altercation with Pata in a dorm room greater than a yr earlier than his loss of life, however he stated on the time Pata died, the 2 had “no beef.”

A former University of Miami athletic division compliance officer additionally testified that on the day of the killing, he had notified Jones that he was suspended from the crew attributable to a failed drug check.

One of the state’s final witnesses Wednesday was a police cellphone specialist who informed swearers in regards to the sample and frequency of Jones’ calls, and he famous that cell tower data didn’t assist Jones’ declare that he was “home all night” on the night of Pata’s loss of life till he drove to his then-girlfriend’s dwelling after getting information of the incident. The witness additionally spoke to a 58-minute hole in Jones’ cellphone utilization proper across the time of the murder.

But 2006-era cellphone expertise is much less exact than right this moment’s telephones, the specialist stated, so whereas they might present Jones’ shifting across the space, it couldn’t “explicitly” place him on the crime scene. In response to questioning by a protection lawyer, the specialist additionally famous a 56-minute hole in calls at an earlier time in the day as properly.

In earlier testimony, some gamers and a coach testified to the completely different trajectories of the 2 athletes: Jones wasn’t as productive as a player, acquired in hassle, and one player stated he was “reprimanded multiple times for various violations,” whereas Pata was described as a star athlete with an NFL future.

In their questioning of witnesses, Jones’ attorneys tried to ascertain that Jones’ alleged actions weren’t actually out of the atypical, noting that a number of soccer gamers owned weapons, gamers routinely had relationships with the identical ladies, and bodily altercations weren’t irregular in a locker room “full of testosterone.”

One teammate testified that he was with Jones in a mutual buddy’s room and noticed Jones with a gun that seemed to be a .38-caliber revolver, and one other stated Jones informed him he had a “.38 on me.” Jones informed Segovia in his interview a number of instances that he didn’t personal or carry a gun.

A firearms skilled testified earlier that the bullet recovered from Pata’s cranium was almost certainly from a .38-caliber revolver. The murder weapon was by no means discovered.

Prosecutors spent intensive time questioning a number of teammates, officers, and even Jones’ ex-girlfriend to ascertain Jones didn’t go to the necessary crew assembly coaches referred to as after listening to Pata had been shot, just for jurors to listen to Jones himself in his post-arrest interview admit to skipping the assembly, saying he did not go as a result of he was despondent after having been suspended for 2 video games for the failed drug check.

One concern Jones didn’t deal with — as a result of he stated it did not occur — was questions on a name he made the evening of the murder to University of Miami baseball player Mike Sanders asking for cash. Jones’ cellphone data present he made the decision, and Sanders testified to Jones having made the request.

Sanders informed swearers that the timing of the decision stood out as a result of he knew the soccer gamers had been on the necessary assembly, and he drove to the college’s athletic heart to inform coaches in regards to the name.

Prosecutors closed their questioning with testimony from now-retired Miami-Dade Medical Examiner Emma Lew, who used a model to point out jurors how the bullet pierced Pata’s cranium. Members of Pata’s household consoled one another and reached for tissues; one left the courtroom in tears throughout her demonstration.

For a lot of the trial, Pata’s family members have crammed at the least two rows of the courtroom gallery, along with his mom Jeanette Pata in a wheelchair alongside her kids.

Pata’s teammate and household buddy Dwayne Hendricks spoke about coming upon Pata’s physique and ready for first responses — after which calling Pata’s mom.

“I tell people to this day that was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life,” Hendricks stated.

Last week, after prosecutors performed the 911 calls from the evening of the murder, Jeanette — visibly upset and shaking her head — appeared towards Jones and cried, “Rashaun.” Her kids labored to calm and take away her from the courtroom, drawing consideration from some of the jurors.

Florida eleventh Circuit Court Judge Cristina Miranda in a number of pretrial rulings denied requests from protection attorneys to introduce proof of different leads police had pursued in the case, together with an alleged hit placed on Pata and his associates after a struggle at a nightclub, threats from relations of Brody, and two reported confessions by different males.

Defense attorneys tried a number of instances over a number of witnesses to introduce some of the opposite leads police had pursued, proof that had been entered into the report however for which there was no follow-up, and errors made in the investigation. Prosecutors objected every time to permitting the jurors to listen to that info and Miranda normally dominated in the state’s favor.

Defense attorneys had been in a position to set up in their questioning of Segovia that investigators didn’t have data for one of Pata’s telephones, that there have been no data generated in the case between 2009 and 2020, and that when police acquired a tip that an inmate had allegedly confessed to killing Pata for cash, they dominated him out, mistakenly believing he was in custody when he was not.

Segovia stood agency on his perception in Jones because the assassin and in the standard of his investigation, saying the proof at all times pointed to Jones.

In addressing the 15-year delay in making an arrest, Segovia stated his deep dive 5 years in the past into present proof, and his determination to repeat some interviews, gave him all he wanted in 2021 to arrest Jones, who first emerged as a suspect shortly after the killing.

“It was all the previous historical threats he had made to the victim. It was the threats accompanied with the display or talk of the same type of firearm that killed the victim,” Segovia informed the jurors. “It was the phone records, it was the identification of Mr. Connor and all the lies… the lies about where he was that night. The lies about the phone.”

Segovia stated when he took the case over in 2020, he had taken the containers of proof and “stripped them down, literally page by page” to construct the case. But when protection attorneys started to ask Segovia about lacking data and different doable suspects, together with a sheet compiled by different detectives noting the standing of leads that they had pursued, he famous that he noticed no have to evaluate leads he stated he believed prior officers had eradicated.

Conversations between attorneys and the choose held outdoors the presence of jurors addressed questions concerning different potential proof.

The first day of testimony, Feb. 17, was delayed after attorneys acquired new details about a reported confession — a tip acquired in 2009 from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who stated an informant had overheard an alleged Haitian hitman confessing to the murder and mentioning Pata by title a couple of weeks after the murder. The alleged hitman additionally claimed the informant to have left particular objects at Pata’s gravesite, which the ICE agent later confirmed had been current.

ICE and Miami-Dade police declined for years to reply ESPN’s requests for detailed details about the tip, and an officer informed ESPN that the alleged hitman had died in the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

New info and a deposition of the ICE agent revealed a sign that the person was probably alive and in Georgia in 2011, and that the ICE agent had stated he was given the “runaround” in 2009 when he tried to convey the data to police investigating Pata’s killing.

Miranda has not dominated to permit testimony concerning the ICE tip into the trial.

ESPN’s Dan Arruda and Scott Frankel contributed to this report.