Boyd
Posted on 04/16/2008 9:18:19 PM PDT by SmithL
The parents of a young couple brutally murdered after a January 2007 carjacking expressed relief this afternoon, while the attorney for Eric Dewayne "E" Boyd said he would appeal the verdict of a federal jury that found Boyd guilty of being an accessory to the carjacking.
"One down. Four to go," said Gary Christian, father of Channon Christian, referring to the four suspects who face trials in state court for the killings of Channon, then 21, and her boyfriend, 23-year-old Christopher Newsom.
"We do this for Channon," said Channon's mother, Deena. "We've been through the worst. We and the Newsoms have lost our children. We can endure anything."
Hugh Newsom began to cry as he said, "It doesn't take the hurt away for the loss of a great son, but at least there's some consolation that this guy is off the street and he'll be off the street for a long time and not be able to hurt anyone else."
His wife, Mary Newsom, credited federal prosecutors David Jennings and Tracy Stone.
"It was kind of like Christmas morning, like you can't wait," she said of awaiting the verdict. "These kids surely didn't deserve anything that happened to them."
Knoxville Police Department Sgt. Tim Snoderly praised KPD investigator Todd Childress and ATF agent Rebecca Bobich, who led the probe.
"We've got a long way to go," Snoderly said. "We've started off on a winning note and we're extremely happy with that."
Defense attorney Phil Lomonaco, a private attorney appointed to represent Boyd, said he would appeal. "It's a tough case. We knew it was going to be. It was a close case, I believe." He said Boyd was "in good spirits."
None of the handful of women who have been present throughout the trial in support of Boyd attended the verdict.
Jurors began deliberations around 9:30 a.m. and reached their verdict around 2:30 after asking U.S. District Court Judge Tom Varlan whether Boyd had to be found to have committed all four acts specified in his indictment - receiving, relieving, comforting and assisting accused ringleader Lemaricus "Slim" Davidson - or whether the law required only that Boyd be found to have committed one or more of those acts.
Varlan ruled that the legal standard was receiving, relieving, comforting or assisting - not all four - and jurors took less than an hour from that explanation to reach their verdict.
Boyd, 35, helped to hide out Davidson, the accused ringleader in the carjacking, torture and slaying of University of Tennessee student Channon Christian, 21, and her boyfriend, Christopher Newsom, 23.
Boyd also was found guilty of "misprison of a felony" - that is, failure to notify law enforcement of the whereabouts of someone you know has committed a crime.
He faces a maximum of 15 on the accessory charge and seven on the second count. Because he is a convicted robber already, he faces the high end of the penalty range.
Among questions jurors faced: What did Boyd know about the carjacking turned killing, when did he know about it and what did he do about it?
Boyd's trial lasted seven days.
The case wrapped up Tuesday. At the request of jurors, Varlan allowed the panel to go home Tuesday evening following late-afternoon closing arguments.
Davidson, his brother, his brother's girlfriend and a friend are charged in Knox County Criminal Court with the slayings of Christian and Newsom at a Chipman Street house leased by Davidson following what has been described as a carjacking gone wrong.
Boyd is not charged in either the carjacking or the slayings but instead is accused in a federal indictment of helping Davidson try to avoid arrest after the crimes. Testimony in this federal trial, however, has raised the spectre that Boyd not only participated in the carjacking but was present at the Chipman Street house immediately following the couple's kidnapping. Boyd's defense attorney denies that.
The entire case, both sides agree, turns on what Boyd knew about the crimes, when he knew it and what he did as a result.
In closing arguments, Stone and Assistant U.S. Attorney David Jennings pointed to testimony from Waste Connections of Tennessee employee Xavier Jenkins as proof Boyd was at the Chipman Street house when the couple were being held captive.
Jenkins identified a car owned by Boyd's cousin, Nicole Mathis, as being parked behind Channon's Toyota 4 Runner outside the house soon after the carjacking. Mathis testified she had loaned the car to Boyd that weekend.
Jenkins also testified there were four men inside the 4 Runner. Only three men are charged in the slayings - Davidson, Letalvis "Rome" Cobbins and George "Detroit" Thomas.
Jennings insisted that testimony, coupled with Boyd's statement to police in which he provided a detailed description of the crimes, is proof Boyd knew about the carjacking firsthand.
"In the early morning hours of Jan. 7, 2007, when Christopher Newsom was about to die and Channon Christian was about to endure one of the most horrendous, hellacious days anyone could ever endure, that's when he knew they were victims of a violent carjacking," Jennings told jurors. "What did he do for the next three days? Kept his mouth shut and did everything he could to help Davidson."
Lomonaco countered that everything Boyd knew about the crimes came from Davidson, who only confessed involvement in the crimes after the pair broke into a vacant house in Northwest Knoxville hours before Boyd's arrest.
"What did he do after Lemaricus Davidson told him what had happened?" Lomonaco asked. "In his statement, he says 'When (Davidson) told me, I left.' He was gone. He wasn't there when (Davidson) got arrested."
Stone countered that telephone records of a neighbor of Boyd's showed that Boyd was still communicating with Davidson after Boyd left the vacant house with a promise to get food for Davidson.
Stone also pointed out that Boyd, when initially confronted by the U.S. Marshals Service's Smoky Mountains Fugitive Task Force, denied knowing Davidson.
Late Monday afternoon and early Tuesday morning, jurors heard graphic testimony from Knox County Acting Medical Examiner Dr. Darinka Mileusnic-Polchan about the deaths of Newsom and Christian.
She told jurors that Newsom was repeatedly raped and then blindfolded, gagged, arms and feet bound and his head covered. Barefoot, he was either led or dragged outside the house to a set of nearby railroad tracks, where a gun was placed to the back of his head and fired. He was shot twice more, once in the neck and once in the back. His body was then set afire, she said.
Christian's death would come only after hours of sexual torture, Mileusnic-Polchan testified.
"It's much more than a simple sexual assault," she said. "It's extreme."
Christian suffered horrific injuries to her vagina, anus and mouth. She was not only raped but savaged with "an object," the doctor testified. She was beaten in the head. Some type of chemical was poured down her throat, and her body, including her bleeding and battered genital area, likely scrubbed with the same solution - all while Christian was alive, the forensic expert said.
She was then "hog-tied," with curtains and strips of bedding, her face covered tightly with a small white trash bag and her body stashed inside five large trash bags before being placed inside a large trash can and covered with sheets, Mileusnic-Polchan testified.
Christian died slowly, suffocating, the medical examiner said.
"My conclusion was she actually died in the trash can," Mileusnic-Polchan testified.
In the wake of that testimony, Lomonaco urged jurors not to allow emotion to sway them.
"You can't base your decisions on emotions or sympathy," he said.
But Jennings urged them to remember exactly what Davidson, linked along with his brother via DNA evidence to the sexual attack on Christian, did and Boyd allegedly tried to conceal.
"With your verdict, your collective voices resonating loudly that this man right here (is) guilty, these families will take the first step on the road to justice," he said.
Boyd
Ping—I think you are familiar with this case WITT.
The Liberal media has buried this hate crime.
IMO, execution methods should include injection of battery acid.
thank God that James Worthy decided to achieve in his life, not become the animal that Boyd had become...
I'm surprised that they covered the killings of the college girls down south by black animals at all....seems once they had the animals in custody, they couldn't hide the fact that they were black and the stories quickly ended....
why these two murder victims have been seldom if ever mentioned in the MSM is strange and purposeful IMO...
As opposed to those happy carjackings, the ones that go right.
I guess when it "went wrong," the carjackers were somehow forced to do what they did.
...after a week of family members “softening up” the convicted with a baseball bat. A 20 penny nail through the business end is optional.
"An outlaw or banditti is a person living the lifestyle of outlawry, meaning literally 'outside the law'. In the common law of England, a judgment declaring someone an outlaw, known as a 'Writ of Outlawry', was one of the harshest penalties in the legal system, since the outlaw could not use the legal system to protect himself if needed, such as from mob justice."
...and give the family first dibs. If someone tortures and kill someone like this, and I don't care what race the perpetrator or victim are (I think Mel Ignatow is seems to be another good candidate). If you can do that to another human being, you are a subhuman piece of garbage and deserve to be treated accordingly.
Ha! Ha! I'm not only familiar with this case, I'm familiar with these types of low-life scum, I was raised in the midst of them.
Something very ugly is rising out of the pit in the form of the Jeremiah Wrights, Jesse Jacksons, Al Sharptons, Farrakhans of the world, whereas if Blacks ever gained power the way they have in South Africa, this type of black on white criminal behavior would become more the norm.
typical________
Exactly...the Carr bros are in a league of their own. Indeed, it simply isn’t covered.
It doesn’t fit the current sermon that blacks are, on average, just a variant of white folk in slightly different suits who can’t get a break.
Any set of crime statistics demonstrates that statistically, blacks are a walking crime wave.
I do not understand why it is ignored though...even conservatives will not touch it.
a buddy of mine and I laugh about it often: it’s too late. I ask him when white males will rise up and put an end to some of this stuff—at least stand up for themselves.
Never.
I agree....there isn’t a set of nuts dangling from a white male in the entire country right now. They won’t even protect their own young citizens. Too skeered.
Many of the callers to conservative radio talk shows are blacks. They call and speak their mind without a care in the world. They know they own the joint.
I’m one of the more outspoken people on the subject of race, and my postings are regularly deleted. I mean, that’s the reason people stfu.
“As opposed to those happy carjackings, the ones that go right.”
Excellent observation, Mr. Henrickson!
I’m very sorry to hear that WITT. It truly makes me sad. I’m very fearful for the world my children are growing up in. I guess that makes me a bitter person then.
I’m not a racist like Obama’s grandma though-ha, ha /sarc, so I know it’s not just blacks that are doing some horrific things. I read all the time about truly awful things that young white people are doing too. Some very recent cases.
The only difference is that I don’t see whites excusing these crimes en masse like many blacks appear to do when it’s blacks that commit the crime especially when it’s a black against a white e.g. O.J., The Jenna Six perps not victims, or the Duke fake rape case perp.
I hear blacks on the radio excusing everything that Obama does or says. Of course, blacks and whites on the left excuse anything a Dem does e.g. Bill Clinton and all his escapades. It does make me laugh now because Hillary thought she had the black vote all sewn up. She wasn’t expecting Obama to come out of the woodwork. She’s finally getting a taste of the same crap she liked to work against Republicans and it really does make me smile.
Anyway, when I read this story tonight, well last night now actually, I tried to look up a picture of the couple to make sure I was remembering the story correctly and see if it was the same couple I was thinking of.
In that search, I came across something terrible that was written about the young female victim in this case. I won’t post it here. How can a person disparage this poor young woman though? I reread what happened to her and it’s one of the most horrific, sad things I’ve ever read. How she was tortured! It reminds me of the Jose Medellin case and what he and some others did to two teenage girls—if you are familiar with that case. I can’t even imagine the terror and pain all these young women must have felt. Can you imagine having what was done to this poor woman done to your body and mind and then to die of suffocation in garbage bags in a trash can!?!
I don’t know WITT. There are some true demons in this world.
I don’t know if you still don’t have cable, but I’ve been watching this new show on one of the cable channels called “I survived”. The show chronicles 3 stories each week of people surviving a violent crime or some exceptional circumstance like a plane crash or getting stuck in a snow storm.
It’s very interesting because they have the people, telling in their own words, what happened in each case.
The very first show and first story of the trio a few weeks back was of a young school teacher in Killeen, Texas that had her apartment broken into just after she arrived home one night.
She was abducted, made to withdraw money from an ATM, raped in a field, and shot in her back twice then a third time for good measure. It was so emotional, frightening, and interesting listening to her story and what was going through her mind. The one good part was that they did catch the guy. After she was left for dead, she managed to get to some houses that she could see in the distance. She stumbled up to a house, and guess who answered the door? A military vet of the first Iraq war. She said that’s exactly who she needed right then—A SOLDIER.
I apologize if this is insulting to you. I don’t mean it to be, but thanks for being on the side of decency instead of race.
I guess it’s like a drug deal gone bad.
Oh, I don’t think they pale in comparison. I think both are in a tie for evilness. I remember reading about that case too.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.