Nine days after asking a judge to delay the start of an upcoming trial for two city men suspected in the 2008 slaying of a convicted drug dealer, Mercer County Assistant Prosecutor Al Garcia said he no longer needs time to track down a crucial witness, paving the way for jury selection to get underway later this month.
Garcia said at a Friday status hearing he no longer plans to call Damon Jefferson, a Trenton police crime-scene detective who worked on the case, to the stand to testify. Afterward, Garcia said it remains to be seen the effect of not having Jefferson available to testify.
With that issue cleared up, jury selection will begin Jan. 12, a process that could take several days to complete before opening statements are heard. The state alleges co-defendants Nigel Joseph Dawson, 31, William Brown, 30, shot and killed 23-year-old Tracy Crews in September 2008, at his Whitaker Avenue home.
Both defendants appeared for Friday’s hearing, flanked by their attorneys. Brown, sporting orange prison garb and a closely cropped hair cut, blew kisses to family members seated at the back of the courtroom.
Dawson spoke only once, when Judge Andrew Smithson asked for the correct pronunciation of his first name. Both defendants are being tried together and have spent nearly three and a half years in a county jail while awaiting trial.
Their attorneys previously called the request to delay trial a stall tactic, and a Superior Court judge chastised Garcia’s handling of the case, calling it “lousy prosecutorial work.”
Jefferson, the witness in question, took photographs and footprint impressions left in the mud outside the Whitaker Avenue home where Crews was gunned down.
But he is unavailable to testify because he has been on stress leave since March 29, when he showed up to police headquarters and found a stuffed brown monkey with a rubber band wrapped around its neck hanging from the side of his desk, prompting an internal affairs investigation.
Garcia said Jefferson’s testimony was vital, a claim that was challenged by defense attorneys, who said other officers could fill in gaps about Jefferson’s involvement in the case.
Smithson was unconvinced at an emergency hearing on Christmas Eve that Garcia couldn’t find a way around having Jefferson testify. He said he would not delay the trial, which could take up to six weeks to complete and required court officials to send out up to 4,000 subpoenas for potential jurors because of the immense time commitment.
The defendants face life in prison if convicted on counts of first-degree murder, first-degree felony murder, first-degree robbery and second-degree possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose.
Brown is also one of five men charged with a separate count of felony murder for the 2011 shooting death of Dardar Paye, a U.S. Army veteran and Liberian immigrant.