The first of three young adults charged with felony murder in a 2015 drug deal gone awry heads to trial today in Hamilton County Criminal Court.
Briston Smith, 20, pinned the murder on a friend after police handcuffed him in March 2015 at his brother's house in Georgia for the slaying of Charles Holsey.
Prosecutors will make the case that Smith and two other friends, Abram Young and Robert Thompson, planned to rob drugs from the 19-year-old. They don't have to put the gun in Smith's hand to argue he should be convicted of felony murder and attempted especially aggravated robbery. Prosecutors just have to show that Smith "unlawfully" killed Holsey while trying to commit a felony.
In the meantime, Thompson has been added to the state's witness list and Young has a court date Wednesday in the same courtroom where Smith is being tried.
Defense attorney Rip Biggs said Tuesday his client was 18 at the time of the crime, "and probably still susceptible to influence from other people."
"What you need to do is look exactly at what's in his mind," Biggs said. "What you're also going to hear is this gentleman talked to the police. He told them who did it, who actually shot them."
Prosecutor Cameron Williams said Holsey occasionally sold marijuana and was riding with his girlfriend on March 2, 2015, to meet "BJ," a man the 19-year-old knew from Berry College. Instead, when Holsey pulled into a parking lot behind the Kangaroo Gas Station on Sylvan Street, two men got into the car. A fight broke out in which Holsey was shot as they tried to rob him, according to Holsey's girlfriend. Holsey managed to drive another half mile up the road before he crashed the car and later died at Erlanger hospital.
Police matched a fingerprint from the car to Smith, who also goes by BJ, and located him a few days later in Georgia. Defense attorneys tried Tuesday to suppress his interview from March 5, 2015, arguing that his mother told at least one responding officer Smith shouldn't talk without representation.
"AB [Young], he upped the gun," Smith told police during that interrogation. "I mean I knew we were gonna do that, but I did not know we were gonna start shooting."
Judge Barry Steelman ruled against the defense, saying Smith knew enough about his rights to ask for a lawyer about 50 minutes into the interview.
"If the defense wants any responses after his statement 'I need a lawyer' then the court will suppress any statements thereafter," Steelman said. "My understanding is the state has agreed to suppress. But the court finds that is evidence he knew how to say, 'I need a lawyer, and didn't previously."
After attorneys selected jurors around 4 p.m., Steelman dismissed them for the day. The trial begins at 10 a.m.
Contact staff writer Zack Peterson at zpeterson@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6347. Follow him on Twitter @zackpeterson918.