In Chamblin Trial, 2 Prosecution Witnesses Puncture Its Own Claim that Catastrophic Argument Had Preceded Murder

The prosecution in Marcus Chamblin’s trial on a murder and attempted murder charge did not have a good day Wednesday as two of its own key witnesses punctured prosecutors’ claim that the victim, Deon Jenkins, was killed as a result of a catastrophic argument.

Both witnesses said that if there’d been an argument, it was petty, and was about a pizza Jenkins ate before he shared it with his friend. It did not sound like the sort of argument that would cause a man to track him down and fire 16 bullets from an AK-47-style assault rifle, killing him and wounding Shakir Terry, the man who’d met Jenkins for drugs and possibly sex.




The shooting took place at the Circle K on Palm Coast Parkway and Belle Terre Parkway early at 3:34 the morning of Oct. 12, 2019. If convicted, Chamblin faces life in prison on the first degree murder and second degree attempted murder charges. His co-defendant, Derrius Bauer, goes on trial on the same charges in September.

The testimonies in the third day of trial weakened the prosecution’s case and buttressed that of the defense, which claims that the state is accusing the wrong man–that another man who was hanging out with Chamblin and Bauer, Jarod P. Humphrey, an alleged drug dealer to whom Jenkins owed money, killed Jenkins.

The two witnesses were D’Shawn Hosang, who is Chamblin’s half brother, and Robert Murphy, a friend of Hosang’s who now lives in Miami. Hosang and Murphy and hung out in the B-Section the night of the murder, drinking heavily. Jenkins was with them for the first part of the night until he said he had to go to work.




Until Wednesday, and as Assistant State Attorney Jason Lewis–who is prosecuting the case with Assistant State Attorney Mark Johnson–told the jury, the claim had been that Hosang and Jenkins had had a major argument, that Hosang threw him out of the house (Jenkins at times crashed at Hosang’s place, which belongs to Hosang’s grandparents), called Chamblin and told him of the argument. Chamblin got “pissed,” said he would kill Jenkins, and later grabbed his weapon and, with Bauer, went to the Circle K and shot at the car Jenkins was in.

Hosang, now 27, was not a cooperative witness. At first he described Jenkins as “a friend of a friend,” then conceded that they were, in fact, friends. But he told Lewis that he did not remember whether there’d been an argument that night, or what it was about. Lewis was incredulous. Your friend gets killed, and you don;t remember what happened? He asked Hosang. “I can’t tell you stuff that I don’t know,” he told Lewis.

Lewis tried to come at Hosang from every possible angle, tried to catch him in a lie, tried to use statements Hosang had made to police to “refresh” his memory. At every turn, Hosang scuttled every parry, clearly using rules of evidence–he somehow seemed to be familiar with–against Lewis: as long as he stuck to saying he did not remember, nor wished to have his memory refreshed, there was nothing Lewis could do to compel him to speak, especially since the Hosang’s statements to police had not been introduced as evidence. So Lewis could not use them to impeach Hosang–to show to the jury that Hosang was lying.

That night you did take Deon back to your house and you had an argument didn’t you? Lewis asked him.




“No, we didn’t,” Hosang said.

How would you remember, if you were drunk?

Hosang said he remembered at least that much.

“And you never kicked Deon out of the house that night?”

“Nope.”

“Never told him to leave?”

“Nope.”

Lewis confronted Hosang with Facebook messages he’d written to Murphy about Jenkins (“fuck him I’m doing my own thing”) but he said he didn’t remember making the statements. The statements themselves were also not that incriminating. They were not by any means the sort of statements that suggest Hosang had turned Cain against an Abel Jenkins.

Hosang’s testimony may well have been a carefully calibrated performance. He was in essence testifying for the state, to help the state make the case against his own brother. He was also, just as clearly, doing everything he could not to help the state’s case. His claims that he could not remember anything about that night, couldn’t remember the Facebook messages he sent Chamblin or others, even after Lewis attempted to show them to him, stretched credibility. Perkins had to reprimand him at one point: “Your obligation is to answer questions, not ask them,” the judge told Hosang.

Hosang’s demeanor on the stand–the arrogance and contempt of his “nope” answers, for instance–did not help him with the jury: he seemed to be more interested in dueling with Lewis, in outsmarting him, in showing him up, than answering his questions. So the performance could well end up backfiring if the jury concludes that he was not credible.




Especially since, undefeated, Lewis than cleverly rattled off the numerous calls Hosang made to Bauer and received from him later that morning, within an hour of the murder, by simply asking Hosang if he remembered making the calls or receiving them. Hosang said no in every case. But that allowed Lewis to show the jury the number of calls, one after the other, that were logged. With every alleged memory lapse by Hosang, Lewis could also imply that Hosang was simply evading the memory that was before him in black and white.

Robert Murphy, the friend Hosang and Jenkins had spent time with that night, had none of Hosang’s arrogance, none of his gamesmanship, and only some of his militant amnesia. Speaking by zoom from his car in Miami, he came across as your average neighborhood bartender (which he is)–earnest, congenial, ready to answer questions.

For that very reason, his corroboration of Hosang’s claim that there’d not been a major argument with Jenkins that he knew of was that much more damning to the prosecution’s case.

It was all about a pizza. What messages Murphy received from Hosang led him to believe that Hosang was mad at Jenkins, but “it didn’t seem like anything very serious.”

“So as far as you remember this was just a tit for tat fight,” Terence Lenamon, Chamblin’s attorney, asked Murphy.

“It didn’t seem necessarily like a serious fight, no,” Murphy answered, after an unsuccessful; objection to the question by Lewis.

The prosecution, with Johnson asking the questions, ended the day more convincingly by recreating the half hour leading to the shooting, and the few minutes following it, with more than a dozen surveillance video clips from almost as many businesses at and around the scene of the murder.

Augustin Rodriguez, the Flagler County Sheriff’s detective at the time, explained each clip’s context and timing to the jury. The clips were a silent-movie-like reconstruction of a man’s last hour. They showed Bauer arriving at the Circle K and standing outside the business. They showed Jenkins arriving with Terry in Terry’s car and parking in what would end up being the fateful space where he’d be killed. They showed Jenkins speaking with Bauer and, with the texts flashing on the courtroom screens, exchanging innocuous texts of the “whatup” variety. They showed Bauer driving off. They showed a person in a hoodie and camouflage pants dissimulating themselves through bushes. They showed that person emerging from the dark and firing the 16 rounds at Terry’s car. They showed Terry’s car backing p and speeding out. And they showed in various clips the apparent shooter walking east through several businesses’ camera views, though at no point could the shooter, who carried something wrapped in a colorful cloth or towel, be identified.

With one exception: the person had a strange, unique gait, one foot pointed forward, the other foot pointed leftward. The kind of gait that may not identify someone like fingerprints, but that unquestionably stands out. The kind of gait that’s hard to replicate. The kind of gait Marcus Chamblin walks with.

The trial’s fourth day continues today before Circuit Judge Terence Perkins and a jury of 14, including two alternates.

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