Marcus Chamblin did not kill 26-year-old Deon O’Neil Jenkins and wound Shakir Terry that early October morning at the Circle K on Palm Coast Parkway. He was not the one wielding the AK-47-style assault rifle that fired 16 bullets into the parked car Terry was driving, with Jenkins as his passenger.
He was not the one captured in several surveillance video clips from businesses around the Circle K. His was not the distinctive gait with which he walks. The hoodie and the camouflage pants the shooter was seen wearing, and that were found with Chamblin a few weeks later, were not the same hoodie and pants no matter what the FBI says and the video footage shows.
The assault rifle, a Draco made to look identical to an AK-47, firing identical-caliber bullets, the rifle Chamblin was seen holding in a rap video, the rifle a man with an identical tattoo as Chamblin’s was seen holding in boastful photographs posted to social media, the rifle North Carolina police noted in a traffic stop in the car Chamblin was riding to get away from Flagler County and that Chamblin sold to a man in Virginia, may well have been the rifle used to kill Jenkins and wound Terry. There’s no dispute about that. But Chamblin wasn’t pulling its trigger.
Rather, a man called Jarod P. Humphrey, an alleged drug dealer to whom Jenkins owed money, and who had just come into a substantial life-insurance payout after the death of his father, fired the gun. Law enforcement bought and paid for Humphrey to turn state’s witness. And Agustin Rodriguez, a gregarious Flagler County Sheriff’s detective at the time, brainwashed all the witnesses into telling his theory of the shooting, which was that Chamblin did it.
That, anyway, is what Terence Lenamon, Chamblin’s defense attorney, told the jury in a Cliff-noted opening argument that lasted all of three minutes Tuesday morning. That’s the theory Lenamon put forth to refute the 41 minutes Assistant State Attorney Jason Lewis spent reconstructing the state’s version of the murder, not always seamlessly–it’s a complicated case–to a bewildered jury of 12, plus two alternates.
Chamblin faces a first-degree murder and second-degree attempted murder charges, and life in prison if convicted. The death penalty is not an option. His co-defendant, Marcus Bauer, goes on trial on the same charges in September.
“Marcus Chamblin did not kill Deon Jenkins,” Lenamon told the jury. “What you’re going to discover about this case is that the process of the investigation into this case is going to be called into question on many levels. That the person who conducted the majority of this case, Detective Rodriguez, spent a lot of time telling witnesses what his theory was, including Jarod Humphrey, and that Jarod Humphrey is paid and bought.”
It’s not impossible. But Lenamon has to convince the jury that it’s reasonably plausible, the flip side of reasonable doubt about Chamblin’s involvement.
There were glimmers of doubt Tuesday when Terry took the stand. Disarmingly earnest, Terry appeared in the bright orange jail garb he’s been wearing since Feb. 29, when he stumbled out of drug court on a probation violation. He tested positive for fentanyl, violating the terms of his drug court contract and is now serving 90 days.
Speaking as ordinarily as if he were discussing sports or a day at school–he was a teacher’s aide at Bunnell Elementary at the time of the shooting–he described how his relationship with Jenkins had been limited to him giving Jenkins car rides and Jenkins giving him drugs. That particular night he’d hooked up with Jenkins hoping for a bit more (Terry is gay, Jenkins was bisexual). Jenkins was going to sell him ecstasy, a drug commonly known as molly. Jenkins couldn’t get his hands on any. They ended up at the Circle K, where Jenkins spoke to someone outside the store (who would turn out to be Bauer).
Jenkins waited, and waited. After about half an hour, Jenkins returned to the car, feverishly looking for something Terry thought was drugs–all over the parking lot, under the car, in the car. The two got back in the car. As Terry was speaking with Jenkins, he saw a flash in the distance, then heard the gunshots strike the car. He panicked. “I tried to get my car in reverse and try to get out of the parking lot,” he testified. Jenkins’s head “bounced off my dashboard so I knew he was dead.” It was never made clear at what point he managed to leave, though video of the shooting shows the car stayed in place until all 16 bullets were fired, and the gunmen disappeared.
None of that was in dispute Tuesday. But this was: when asked what or whom he saw shooting, Terry equivocated, saying he thought he saw someone “light-skinned,” someone “tall,” (Chamblin is 5’7’’ and weighed 230 pounds when he was booked in 2021; he’s slighter now). Lenamon probed a bit about that but the prosecution managed to get Terry to acknowledge that he was in a panic at the time, he could have been confused about what he saw, or didn’t see. So if Lenamon was hoping to cast a cumulus of doubt over what Terry had seen out of his peripheral vision, he appears to have failed, especially after Assistant State Attorney Mark Johnson managed to get Terry to say the obvious: that video surveillance would be more reliable.
And if Lenamon had hoped that Terry would begin to dim the memory of the intended shock of Lewis’s opening argument, that too, appears to have fallen short, especially since Lenamon has none of Lewis’s flair for connecting with juries on a visceral level: Lewis knows Flagler County juries. Lenamon is a Fort Lauderdale attorney trying his first case in Circuit Judge Terence OPerkins’s courtroom. Homefield advantage is not a zero factor in this case.
“‘The phone steady ringin’, mama called tonight to say I made the news. You best believe I didn’t think twice. I sent the N-i-g-g-a to the Lord.’ Not my words, ladies and gentlemen,” Lewis had told the jury in the opening lines of his opening argument, quoting lyrics Chamblin had written in the aftermath of the murder. “ The words of this defendant sitting right here after he hunted down and murder Deon Jenkins on October 12, 2019, in the parking lot of a circle K on Palm Coast Parkway. This wasn’t just any regular murder. This was an execution done in a cold, calculated way. You will hear how this defendant armed himself with a high-powered assault weapon and he shot, shot, shot, shot, shot–16 times into a vehicle occupied by two human beings. Those bullets slice through that car like Swiss cheese. The result of his actions was Deon Jenkins was dead.”
Prosecutors almost always use audio, video and images to illustrate their closing arguments, but almost never do in opening arguments. Lewis did so with his opening, immediately flashing a large, black and white studio portrait of Jenkins on the overhead screens and the screen placed in front of the jury–and the whole courtroom–next to the witness stand. He also flashed crude color portraits of Bauer and others to underscore the contrast as he reconstructed the story up to the moment of the shooting and its complex trajectory beyond it.
Everyone had known each other.Until that night Jenkins had been a housemate of Chamblin’s brother, D’Shawn Hosang, at Chamblin’s and Hosang’s grandparents’ house in Palm Coast’s B Section. Lewis never made clear what had so troubled Hosang to kick Jenkins out the night of the shooting, as Chamblin, Bauer and Humphrey were partying at the Red Roof Inn. But according to Humphrey, Hosang called his brother, told him how angry he was, and Chamblin exploded: “He’s pissed off at Deon Jenkins,” Lewis told the jury, and he quotes Chmblin allegedly saying, “I’m going to kill that motherfucker.”
In fact, on Wednesday, Hosang on the stand denied ever having an argument with Jenkins or kicking him out of the house.
Nor did Lewis explain why Chamblin called Bauer, but not Humphrey, to go to the Circle K, or why Humphrey didn’t go, other than that, that night, he’d also had a hair stylist come over to do his hair. But Lewis acknowledged that for a long time, Humphrey did not want to snitch on his friends, until he was convinced to do so when he was offered an undisclosed reward. Then it all spilled. At least so the prosecution has it.
To the defense, Humphrey was “motivated by money or promises.” Humphrey “knew that he was square in the middle of this and that he was at risk of getting arrested.” So he lied.
The prosecution spent the rest of the day authenticating surveillance videos and entering into evidence basic elements of the crime–crime scene photos, the bullets recovered, locations where they were found, and so on. Bystanders who’d stopped by the Circle K to get gas also described what they saw, and a man who was smoking pot with a friend outside the Papa John’s next door to the Circle K, on the other side of a hedge, described seeing the strange scene of a a man walk by in a hoodie and throw himself into the bushes, in the direction of the gas station, before the gunfire shattered the silence.
In that case, the witness described the gunman, who walked within four or five feet of him, more in line with what Chamblin would have looked like at the time: 5’8’’ to 6 feet tall, 220 pounds, and “he was walking like he was injured,” a detail that will prove key to the prosecution’s case as the jury watches surveillance video.
Every time an attorney or a witness would allude to the moments of the shooting, a member of Jenkins’s family who sat on the front row immediately sobbed, again and again, as if the shooting had just happened. Members of Chamblin’s circle sat on the other side of the courtroom, less reactive. Toward the end of the day, Perkins reminded both groups: “Whatever that reaction is, I am expecting you to keep that reaction to yourself,” he said. “I am asking that you respect the decorum of the court and proceedings.”
Jenkins’s family members had not returned Wednesday, likely forewarned that the medical examiner would testify, with pictures, about her autopsy of Jenkins. The jury saw those pictures this morning, as the trial entered its third day.
C’mon man says
Best defense in any jury trial. “Wasn’t me”. Works every time.
A Concerned Observer says
Remember folks, a defense lawyers’ sole job is not to preach the truth but to get their client off, whatever that takes. Can you remember ”If it does not fit, you must acquit”? It’s called Spaghetti Defense, referring to a method of determining if the the spaghetti is done. If you throw a few strands of spaghetti against the wall and it sticks; it’s done.
Ray W. says
Interesting observation, A Concerned Observer.
What of those cases in which the prosecution does not present the truth to the jury? There are times when a defense attorney’s sole job is to present the truth to the jury, because the prosecutor won’t. I adhere to the idea that cross-examination can be the greatest engine ever devised by the mind of mankind in the search for truth.
That being said, I agree with you that a defense attorney’s role can significantly differ from that of the prosecution. In the mid-70’s, a Florida trial judge sanctioned a defense attorney for disrupting the evidentiary methods employed by the prosecutor. Florida’s Supreme Court reversed the sanctions. As I recall from so many years ago when I first read the opinion, a concurring opinion dealt with the issue. The concurring judge wrote that it was the defense attorney’s ethical obligation to his client to disrupt the prosecution’s presentation by all means possible under the law. Procedural due process demanded that much.
Procedural due process, for decades, has been defined as notice and a right to be heard. If a defendant asserts that the witnesses against him have been paid to tell a particular story, then due process demands of a defense attorney the obligation to present that issue to the jury. Anything less violates a client’s right to a fair trial.