Nigel Dawson and William Brown are accused of the 2008 murder of Tracy Crews. (Submitted photos)
William “Paperboy” Brown cared about one thing and one thing only. And it led him to betray his best friend, Tracy Crews, in the worst way, the prosecutor, Al Garcia, said Tuesday, summing up the drama-packed Crews murder trial.
Brown’s nickname, Garcia said during closing arguments, is “Paperboy. Not Tracyboy. Paperboy, because he’s all about the paper. And that’s what they were trying to get when they shot Tracy Crews.”
Brown and co-defendant Nigel Joseph Dawson have been on trial for the last month for the Sept. 12, 2008 murder of Crews, a Bloods gang member and convicted drug dealer.
But, Garcia said, above all, “He was a man. You don’t get the drug-dealer discount if you’re a murderer.”
The state, relying on 16 witnesses, including pivotal testimony from jailhouse informants, contends Dawson confessed to shooting Crews in the neck after he panicked when Crews recognized Dawson and Brown as the ski mask-clad assailants inside the kitchen of his Whittaker Avenue residence.
Jailhouse informants, Isaiah Franklin and Terrell Black, said Brown, Crews’ close friend, former roommate and the best man at his wedding, admitted setting up the robbery, which was supposed to net the defendants $40,000 in drug proceeds.
Brown, a fellow member of Crews’ G-Shine set of the Bloods street gang, knew his friend resumed dealing heroin after he was paroled from state prison on a drug conviction in November 2007, the state says.
The largely circumstantial case against the defendants, Garcia conceded, pits the state’s jailhouse informants against the defense’s lone jailhouse informant. Maria Cappelli, was cellmates with Sheena Robinson-Crews, the victim’s widow, in state prison in Muncy, Pa, where Robinson-Crews spent time on a drug conviction she picked up after she was arrested months after her husband’s death.
As part of a third-party guilt defense, the defense contends Robinson-Crews set up her husband’s murder because he was physically and emotionally abusive. Cappelli testified last week Robinson-Crews admitted handing the killers, two unnamed gang members, keys to the couple’s apartment while she waited outside for her husband to tuck their then-2-year-old daughter into bed.
Garcia said Cappelli got critical facts incorrect and her story was “all wrong.” Additionally, he asked the jury to examine her track record alongside the state’s jailhouse informants.
Cappelli waited four years to report Robinson-Crews to prison officials, was arrested more than 200 times and has nearly 50 aliases, Garcia said.
“She lied to police about her name,” he said.
Steven Lember, Brown’s attorney, told the jury the state is asking it to convict his client of murder, felony murder, robbery and weapons offenses based upon inconclusive DNA evidence – a ski mask, recovered in an alley near the murder scene, that had a mixture of DNA matching Brown and another unidentified person – testimony from jailhouse informants who were incentivized to lie and the word of a “confirmed, committed and compulsive liar,” referring to Robinson-Crews.
Robinson-Crews testified her husband’s last words, responding to her question about the identity of his murderer, was “Paperboy.”
At the same time, she admitted she refused to cooperate with police for several critical hours after he husband’s death and repeatedly lied to them about his dying declaration.
Initially, she told police, Crews also mentioned Dawson, but recanted that statement several years later, in 2013, during a jailhouse interview with lead police detective, Gary Britton.
“The only thing we know is someone shot and killed Tracy Crews,” Lember said. “Everything else is up for grabs, It’s not your job to solve this cold case.”
In his nearly hourlong summation, Lember said he couldn’t explain why police did not pursue criminal charges against Robinson-Crews when they realized she falsely accused his client of pointing a gun at her sometime after the murder.
“The state knew, ‘We can’t prosecute the case on her word,” Lember said. “So it went cold. … The case didn’t get better [after that]. It got worse.”
In regards to testimony from jailhouse informants Franklin and Black, dubbed by the defense the “Burlington boys” since they shared a connection through the county as well as a series of grocery-mart robberies, Lember told the jury they were “resourceful job-seekers who were looking for a payback.”
Franklin and Black were released from a county jail the same day they gave statements implicating Dawson and Brown in the murder, Lember said.
“They got a get-out-of-jail-free card,” he said. “And the state was too happy to oblige.”
Dawson’s attorney, Edward Hesketh, zeroed in on a blurry still of his client, taken from a surveillance system that captured two figures fleeing the murder scene shortly after Crews was shot, that Crews’ mother identified as Dawson.
In the still, the man is wearing a coat resembling one found strewn in an alley near the murder scene.
When the authorities showed Barbara Portis, Crews’ mother, the photo, she identified it as Dawson, based off his posture and mannerisms.
The state has said the tall, distinctive profile of the man in the photo aligns with Dawson, who is a lanky 6 feet, 3 inches.
Hesketh said the grieving Portis, who was told by her daughter-in-law that Dawson was involved in the murder, just wanted to see someone held responsible for her son’s slaying.
Then, Hesketh turned his attention to Crews’ dying declaration, saying it was implausible, based off testimony of William Rivera, a city man who said he rushed to Crews’ side and asked him what happened.
Rivera said Crews strained to say something, but couldn’t muster any words.
Rivera conceded he was distracted while speaking on the phone with an emergency dispatcher, didn’t notice Robinson-Crews rush to her husband’s side and wouldn’t necessarily have heard something Crews told his wife while she cradled him in her arms.
Nonetheless, Hesketh said, Crews was getting weaker not stronger.
“Every heart pump, more blood was coming out,” he said. “Life was leaving him.”
Garcia revisited several of the defense’s points in his closing argument, notably that the murder case “rises and falls with Sheena Robinson-Crews.” Quite simply, he said, it doesn’t. Then he spent several minutes patching up holes in her character.
Sure, she lied to police, Garcia said. Who wouldn’t in her position, Garcia said, pointing to the fact that her husband ran a drug enterprise and was a gang member.
Beyond that, he said, Robinson-Crews wanted recriminations – that’s why she didn’t cooperate with the police and lied.
“She wanted street justice,” he said.
Plus, the prosecutor said, if she had really conspired in her husband’s murder, then why did she shower him with gifts earlier in the day.
Garcia pointed to a home-theater system Robinson-Crews purchased for her husband 10 hours before he was killed.
“Tracy Crews was a man,” Garcia said, echoing statements the family has made to The Trentonian. “All he was doing was coming home to put his daughter to bed.”