“Who did this to you? Who did this to you? Who did this to you?”
Sheena Robinson-Crews held her husband close, frantically asking him for the identity of the person who shot him inside the couple’s Whittaker Avenue residence on Sept. 12, 2008.
A dying Tracy Crews spit up a mouthful of blood and mumbled the name of his close friend, Robinson-Crews testified Tuesday.
“Pa-per-boy.”
Paperboy is the nickname of William Brown, Crews’ former roommate and the best man at his wedding. The men were described as “inseparable” in court Tuesday, almost “like family.”
Crews, a convicted drug dealer and a member of the G-Shine set of the Bloods street gang, was paroled from state prison and being monitored by an ankle bracelet when he went to live at the home of his mother, Barbara Portis, in November 2007.
Crews had to comply with strictures of parole and wasn’t allowed out of the house often, so he and Brown, a fellow G-Shine member, would play video games. Sometimes Brown spent the night at Crews’ mother’s residence. He’d run errands for his friend, picking up groceries.
The prosecution showed pictures of Crews posing alongside Brown and Nigel Joseph Dawson at his wedding in Ewing. All three were friends, Brown admittedly closer to Crews than Dawson, but the state said the men betrayed Crews over $40,000.
Barbara Portis, Crews’ mother, testified she remembered an occasion when Dawson threw up at her house after getting a tattoo during a tattoo party.
More important, she acknowledged the ominous cloud of suspicion hanging over the Crews murder trial: Portis believed her son’s wife was somehow involved in his murder.
“Yes, I did,” Portis said, responding to a question from Dawson’s attorney, Edward Hesketh.
For this reason and others, the defense has attacked Robinson-Crews’ credibility and a recollection she shared with police of her husband’s final words.
Robinson-Crews, a central figure in the murder trial, was recalled to the witness stand Tuesday to testify about her husband’s dying declaration – a declaration that was initially barred from evidence because another judge, Robert Billmeier, said it was unreliable.
But the presiding judge, Andrew Smithson, ruled earlier this week the state could present the dying declaration as a way to couch some of Robinson-Crews’ admitted lies.
The dying declaration, Smithson said, could help the jury make sense of a false allegation Robinson-Crews made against Brown, when she claimed he had pointed a gun at her.
Robinson-Crews was one of three state witnesses – including Portis and Trenton Police Detective Gary Britton – who testified before the prosecution rested its case.
Now, the defense will have its chance to raise a specter of reasonable doubt. They will do so without Brown and Dawson, who told the judge they will not take the stand in their own defense.
“Tell the jury I elected not to testify,” Brown told Smithson.
Smithson turned to Dawson asked him what he should inform the jury.
“That I won’t be testifying.”
Defense attorneys are instead expected to formally accuse Robinson-Crews of conspiring in her husband’s murder and covering up it up by framing their clients, relying on testimony from a Pennsylvania inmate, Maria Cappelli, to raise their third-party guilt defense.
Robinson-Crews’ words play a major role in that defense because she has acknowledged changing her story about her husband’s dying declaration multiple times, first telling authorities her husband mentioned Brown and Dawson.
It wasn’t until 2011, while she was incarcerated in state prison in Pennsylvania on a drug conviction, that Robinson-Crews admitted to police her husband never mentioned Dawson, who goes by the street name “Youngin.” Explaining to a detective she now wanted to be “110 percent honest,” she said she added his name into the mix because she knew he and Brown often did things together.
Robinson-Crews was asked by the prosecutor, Al Garcia, to describe the chaotic scene outside of Whittaker Liquors on the night in question.
Crews had staggered toward the bar after being shot inside the couple’s home. He collapsed trying to gain entry to the bar while someone held the door shut.
Crews was seen on video laying on the ground for several seconds before picking himself up. He collapsed a second time a few feet away from the bar entrance, in the street near a gutter.
Robinson-Crews said she rushed to her husband’s side, cradling him in her arms and positioning her head close enough to his face that she could have kissed him. Robinson-Crews remained with her husband until an ambulance arrived. The state contends that was plenty of time for her husband’s dying declaration.
But the defense has intimated throughout trial that Robinson-Crews fabricated the dying declaration to sway suspicion from her and on to the defendants.
The defense called another city man, William Rivera, to the witness stand Tuesday to rebut Robinson-Crews’ testimony.
Rivera testified he was standing feet from the couple when he heard Robinson-Crews hysterically ask her husband repeatedly who shot him. Moments before Robinson-Crews emerged from her car, Rivera tried assisting Crews because he noticed him “bloodied up.”
Rivera said he had just walked out of Whittaker Liquors when he heard the screen door to Crews’ residence slam against the railing.
Then Rivera noticed a man, later identified as Crews, running in the street. His shirt was drenched in blood to the point where Rivera thought Crews was wearing a red shirt.
Rivera said he crouched down to within a foot of Crews face and asked him several times what happened. He said Crews strained and tried mouthing something but nothing came out.
“He would look at me and try to respond, but he couldn’t,” Rivera said. “If you would have got it out, he would have got it out. I’ve been shot and I got it out.”
After getting no response from Crews, Rivera called 911. While he was on the phone, Robinson-Crews showed up, he said. Rivera said he never strayed more than a few feet from the couple and didn’t hear Crews say anything to his wife.
When Garcia questioned Rivera, he focused on Rivera’s alcohol consumption and proximity to the couple, suggesting it was possible Rivera was preoccupied with the dispatcher and chaotic scene and wasn’t in the position to overhear the couple’s conversation.
Rivera acknowledged drinking about an hour before he got off his work shift at another city bar. He said he got a ride home and walked from his home to Whittaker Liquors, where he drank more. In all, Rivera said he consumed about six 12-ounce cans of Coors Light and two shots of brandy within a two-and-a-half-hour span.