- 7/22/2023
Lawyers Face Off During Heated Closing Arguments in YNW Melly’s Double Murder Tr(1)
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00:00 straight ahead on Law and Crime Daily.
00:03 After weeks and weeks of testimony, the jury will finally have the chance to talk about
00:08 the case against YNW Melly.
00:10 It'll be up to 12 people to decide if the rapper killed two of his best friends, or
00:15 if he should walk free.
00:17 We're taking you through the closing arguments from both sides.
00:20 Someone who was in that rear seat is the person who committed this murder.
00:25 And so now, the question is who?
00:30 So I'm going to show you now why the state has proven who was Jamel Dennis.
00:38 You folks are going to determine this young man's fate.
00:44 And they come in here and give you alternatives.
00:48 Law and Crime Daily, covering court cases from coast to coast.
00:52 Welcome, everybody, to Law and Crime Daily.
01:02 I'm Jesse Weber.
01:03 The jury officially has the YNW Melly murder case, and the deliberations have begun.
01:08 On Thursday, the attorneys on both sides had their last chance to argue the rapper's guilt
01:13 or innocence.
01:14 Melly, whose real name is Jamel Demmons, is accused of killing two of his closest friends.
01:19 The deadly shooting happened inside of an SUV in the Fort Lauderdale area of South Florida
01:23 in 2018.
01:24 He was seen on surveillance getting into a Jeep with Courtland Henry, Christopher Thomas,
01:28 and Anthony Williams as other friends got into a red Mitsubishi.
01:32 Now, at some point during the drive to Demmons' home, the defendant says he got out of the
01:36 Jeep and into that Mitsubishi.
01:39 And not long after that, Henry showed up at a hospital with Thomas and Williams bleeding
01:43 in the car.
01:44 They were both pronounced dead.
01:45 Henry told investigators that there was a drive-by shooting, but police say they determined
01:50 the deadly shots were fired from inside the car.
01:53 They charged both Demmons and Henry with murder, claiming Demmons was the shooter in the backseat.
01:58 Demmons could face the death penalty if he's convicted.
02:01 The prosecution gave their closing argument first.
02:03 Prosecutor Christine Bradley used her time to remind jurors of the evidence against Demmons
02:08 with a focus on forensics.
02:11 The law is clear that this defendant committed two counts of first-degree murder.
02:17 I now have the opportunity to explain all of the evidence.
02:21 This chemical reacts no matter how many years later, no matter what attempt at cleanup is
02:27 done, the chemical is still going to react to the presence of the blood.
02:31 So then you have that reaction.
02:37 And that reaction, ladies and gentlemen, tells you that someone is sitting in this seat.
02:46 Because as Detective Williams illustrated, it's where the blue star isn't.
02:50 So there is no blood.
02:53 There's no blood where someone's -- would have been sitting.
02:59 There's no blood where their legs would have been, and you can see on the "V" that's indicated
03:04 on that.
03:05 And there's no blood on the back of the seat.
03:10 So ladies and gentlemen, what does that tell you?
03:13 The killer was sitting there.
03:15 That the Redmond's Vichy didn't stop.
03:18 That the 30 minutes and 30 miles are consistent with one another.
03:24 That there was no stopping on the side of the road.
03:28 And also, there's no reason.
03:31 There is no reason that's been put before this jury whatsoever, not in the phone records,
03:38 not in the Snapchat, nothing that explains why eight people that are going to the exact
03:47 same location would stop on the side of the road.
03:55 One person would switch a car.
03:59 No reason whatsoever.
04:00 Ladies and gentlemen, you have a confession in this case.
04:01 4 p.m., I did that with a smiley face.
04:02 Ladies and gentlemen, I would ask that you serve justice, that you deliberate, and that
04:03 you return a verdict of guilty as charged as to murder in the first degree.
04:24 All right, let's talk about it.
04:25 I'm joined right now by my co-host, defense attorney Brian Buckmeyer, and our special
04:29 guest, former federal prosecutor Nima Rahmani.
04:32 Great to have you both here.
04:33 Nima, I'll start with you.
04:34 You were a prosecutor.
04:35 What did you think of Christine Bradley's closing?
04:37 Jesse, I got to be honest, I was a bit underwhelmed.
04:40 I expected more.
04:41 It was a strong case, and I think the defense did a good job in their summation.
04:46 As a prosecutor in rebuttal, I like to sandbag a little bit, keep some of my best points.
04:50 I think the mistakes that were made here is she needed to pound the confession, pound
04:54 that cell phone evidence.
04:55 I think she was on the defensive, spent too much time trying to explain away some of the
05:00 questions that the defense raised in their closing.
05:04 Talk about the victims, talk about the evidence, and again, hammer that point home.
05:08 I think really she ended with a little bit of a whimper as opposed to obeying there.
05:13 Well, Nima is not convinced, Brian, but let's play devil's advocate here.
05:16 Let's say they focused on some key points like the bullet trajectory, the alleged confession.
05:20 For the defense, what do they have to do to combat what the prosecution put forward?
05:24 The defense has to come in and poke holes where they've already established that there
05:28 are potential holes in the case.
05:30 Attack the investigation.
05:32 Attack the investigation in a way that says they could have done more, and if they had
05:35 done more, then they would have more answers, and the lack of answers equals reasonable
05:40 doubt.
05:41 Continue down that pathway.
05:42 Go through each one of the questions.
05:44 Myself, though, I would also attack some of the math here.
05:46 Yes, that outline shows that someone is there.
05:49 Great, but you don't have no idea whether or not they stopped.
05:51 I mean, you and I were talking just quickly, 30 miles in 30 minutes, so you think they're
05:55 going 60 miles an hour then?
05:57 You think they're driving the speed limit?
05:59 Maybe they stopped for a second and then kept speeding on.
06:01 That's easy to kind of combat.
06:03 Don't open yourself up to arguments like that.
06:04 Well, let's see if they listened to your advice, or, you know, after the fact, because we have
06:08 a lot more to cover after this break, including what the defense had to say in their closing
06:15 arguments.
06:16 But first, we want to bring you part of Thursday's Q&A session, where we take your viewer questions.
06:20 Correspondent, Terry Austin, has been inside the courtroom for all of the action and answered
06:25 a question from a YouTube viewer.
06:28 So let's get to our next question.
06:31 Latasha Gaffney from YouTube.
06:34 The prosecutor said Mellie didn't want to leave any witness behind, so why didn't he
06:39 kill Courtland Henry?
06:40 Do you think the jury is going to ask the same question?
06:44 Do you think they caught that part?
06:46 So I will send that one over to you, Terry.
06:51 So I think what the prosecution is trying to say as far as that is concerned is Mellie
06:57 wanted the other two, Juvie and Zach Chaser, gone because he didn't want to split up the
07:02 money with them, but he felt as though Henry had his back.
07:07 That was one of the messages she read to the jury during her closing argument.
07:12 So I'm assuming that her theory here is he left Henry alive because he was more of an
07:19 asset than the others.
07:21 Now if you believe her motive for these is the greed, the resentment, then she's saying
07:27 that he did not have, Mellie, the defendant, did not have any greed or resentment or any
07:32 of those things as far as Henry was concerned.
07:35 So that's why he allowed him to live, according to the prosecution.
07:39 And welcome back to Everybody.
07:51 So the jury started deliberations Thursday afternoon in the case of rapper YNW Mellie,
07:55 whose real name is Jamelle Demmons.
07:57 He's charged with two counts of murder after his two friends were shot and killed in South
08:01 Florida five years ago.
08:02 In our last segment, we talked about some of the biggest moments from the prosecution's
08:06 closing argument.
08:07 The Demmons' defense team only spent about an hour delivering their closing argument
08:11 and made sure to point out all the problems with the state's case.
08:15 How does a reasonable doubt occur?
08:18 Well, the judge told you.
08:21 It can come from the evidence itself, a conflict in the evidence, or a lack of evidence.
08:30 You don't need all three of these areas.
08:33 But I suggest to you folks that we have a reasonable doubt from the evidence that has
08:40 been presented that there is a conflict in the evidence and there's a lack of evidence.
08:47 October 26, that day of the shooting, we learned immediately that that Jeep was taken to a
08:55 secure area and it was searched for over 15 hours by two crime scene technicians.
09:05 And you heard how they pulled out the evidence, some foam, some projectiles, I think a can,
09:15 everything, and photographed the vehicle.
09:17 Now, why is that important?
09:19 That vehicle was searched again months later, but it didn't stop there because about three
09:27 years later, miraculously, even though it was searched for hours by crime scene technicians,
09:37 Sergeant Williams comes into the scene at the request of the state of Florida, this
09:42 particular prosecutor right here.
09:46 And miraculously, he finds additional evidence, two projectiles and a bloodstain that obviously
09:52 everyone else missed.
09:53 That should tell you something about the quality of this investigation.
10:00 They told you that they have accepted the responsibility, that they have the burden
10:09 of proof.
10:13 They told you that they would prove each element of this case.
10:22 What they have proved to you is that Cortlandt Henry is involved in this case.
10:36 And that's what I want to focus on.
10:37 So NEMA, Stuart Edelston, he pointed multiple times toward Cortlandt Henry as the real culprit.
10:42 You think that's a good strategy?
10:44 I think it's a great strategy, Justin.
10:45 We knew this was something that was going to happen.
10:47 Obviously, the defense, they always like to point the finger at someone else.
10:50 And when you have a co-defendant, who better person than that?
10:54 That's why defendants like to sever these trials, because defenses tend to be inconsistent.
10:58 So if you're the prosecution, you have to anticipate this coming.
11:01 And you've got to tell the jurors, listen, even if we don't know who pulled the trigger,
11:05 whether it was Mellie or Henry, it doesn't matter, at least for the guilt phase.
11:09 Maybe that's for the penalty.
11:10 But you're an accomplice, you're a co-conspirator, you're responsible for the murder.
11:14 So I wish the state spent a lot more time on that, because again, it's something that
11:19 I think is very important and something that they should have anticipated.
11:22 And talking about the state, Brian, we know that the prosecution actually responded to
11:27 the defense's closing argument in a real quick rebuttal argument.
11:31 I was curious what your thoughts are on what points they made, if you thought it was effective.
11:35 And also, can the jury consider manslaughter?
11:38 Yeah, so overall, I wasn't too impressed with the prosecution's rebuttal, and I'll say like
11:44 this.
11:45 As a defense attorney, the one thing that I'm really jealous about for prosecutors,
11:48 they get the final word.
11:49 And I feel like she had that opportunity to really come back and smack down a lot of the
11:53 arguments that the defense put out, but it seemed weak at points.
11:56 It seemed just a rehashing of what she had already said, rather than dismantling what
12:01 the defense was arguing.
12:02 And then to the manslaughter part, we all kind of was like, what's going on here?
12:05 Because the judge gave them the lesser included manslaughter charge, which the prosecution
12:09 argued for.
12:10 But in the middle of her closing argument, in the rebuttal, she says, this is what manslaughter
12:15 means, basically an act that someone takes on or perpetrates, and it just causes someone's
12:20 death.
12:21 There's no real premeditation there.
12:22 But she said, this is not manslaughter.
12:24 She totally threw away the lesser included that she had won there, and then just kept
12:28 moving with her argument.
12:29 It was bizarre.
12:30 She's going for all or nothing with the murder.
12:32 And I mean, manslaughter would be interesting.
12:34 It would mean like something happened in that car that caused him to do that, which would
12:38 be very interesting, because that really hasn't been argued one way or another.
12:42 So that's interesting.
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