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Murder verdict upheld by 7th District

TRACEY BLAIR
Legal News Reporter

Published: April 22, 2014

The 7th District Court of Appeals recently affirmed the murder conviction and sentence in a Campbell robbery gone wrong.

Dreon A. Williams was found guilty by a Mahoning County jury of murder, attempted murder, felonious assault and tampering with evidence for an Aug. 6, 2010 incident. He was sentenced in 2011 to 33 years to life in prison.

According to case summary, Williams and his brother, Dionte Robinson, were accused of shooting two men and hiding the weapons as they fled the scene.

One of the men died from his injuries. The other victim survived and initially told police he was injured when he was struck by a car.

Williams’ brother was tried separately and acquitted.

On appeal, Williams argued six assignments of error.

One argument was that his due process rights were violated because the state gave “inconsistent” motives.

For instance, one witnesses testified the two shooters and two victims argued over a woman. Another said simple robbery was the motive.

“Appellant inexplicably sought at trial, and urges here, that the court must require the state to identify a single specific motive for the crimes Appellant was found guilty of committing,” 7th District Judge Cheryl L. Waite wrote in a 3-0 opinion. “… The two witnesses are not providing conflicting versions of contemporaneous events, they are describing a sequence of events. Neither witness’s testimony makes the other witness’s improbable or impossible.”

Williams also unsuccessfully argued the trial court erred by denying his right of confrontation by materially limiting the cross examination of the state’s informant.

He claimed the trial court should not have stayed the state’s objection to the question, “Were you informed that the State was looking to send you to the penitentiary?”

Judge Waite wrote: “Appellant claims that because he was stopped from this line of questioning, he was prevented from suggesting that Richards had received leniency in exchange for making a statement incriminating Appellant. However, the record shows that his counsel succeeded in making this point in his continuing cross-examination.”

The panel also found no merit in the rest of Williams’ claims.

He also argued the trial court should not have denied his motion of acquittal, that the guilty verdict of tampering with evidence was against the manifest weight of the evidence, that the court erred in sentencing him to consecutive sentences on the murder and attempted murder counts, and that he should not have received consecutive sentences for the gun specifications.

Appellate judges Joseph J. Vukovich and Mary DeGenaro concurred.

The case is cited State v. Williams, 2014-Ohio-1015.


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