For Derrius Bauer, Co-Defendant in Circle K Murder, a Choice Between Risking Life in Prison and a Grim Deal

Last week Marcus Chamblin was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison in the killing of Deon Jenkins outside a Palm Coast Circle K in 2019. That was not the end of the case. Derrius Bauer, his 29-year-old friend and alleged co-conspirator in the murder, goes on trial the first week of September on the same charges of first-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder, if he doesn’t plead out before then.




Prosecutors are not holding their breath. Bauer was not a witness during the trial. He refused to cooperate with the prosecution–he refused to snitch on his friend–and refused a deal. While a jury deliberated less than an hour to find Chamblin guilty, concluding that there was no question he fired the AK-47-style assault rifle that killed Jenkins, the case against Bauer is less direct: the prosecution must prove that Bauer knew that Chamblin intended to kill Jenkins and planned the murder with Chamblin.

Bauer will be deciding between now and September whether he will risk life in prison (the death penalty is not an option) or attempt to seek out a deal that could result in a sentence that stops short of that. The prosecution is not likely inclined to offer him anything like the generous terms it might have offered when it was hoping to turn him against Chamblin. Bauer is already paying the price of loyalty. Absent an offer from the prosecution, Bauer could still tender a plea that leaves it up to the judge to decide a punishment. But given the evidence and the verdict in the Chamblin trial, a judge is also unlikely to be kinder than the prosecution.

In sum, because Bauer’s options are so limited or grim, he may see a trial as the only alternative: he has nothing more to loose.

There is always the chance that a jury may not see Bauer’s role the way last week’s jury seemed to have no choice but to see Chamblin’s. Chamblin pulled the trigger. Bauer did not. Bauer’s defense could claim that all he’d done was meet Jenkins for a drug deal, that he had no idea what Chamblin was up to, or that he wanted to kill Jenkins, though it would be hard to explain why Chamblin, or a hooded figure very much like him, was seen in Bauer’s car when it first made a pass in the Circle K parking lot, before Bauer dropped Chamblin off–or why Bauer and Chamblin had worked out such an elaborate scheme around the Circle K at 3 a.m.




If Bauer is betting–as Chamblin did–that he could outrun the charges, the evidence against him that emerged at trial is still substantial, as is the fact that at no point was the defense capable of producing anything like exculpatory evidence for either Bauer or Chamblin, or use any of the witnesses’ testimonies to distance the two men from the murder. The one theory the defense hung on to throughout–that a friend of Chamblin’s and Bauer’s, Jerod Humphrey, did the killing–was never substantiated by so much as a single contact between Humphrey and Jenkins.

On the other hand, Bauer’s name, his face and his presence at the scene of the shooting minutes before Chamblin opened fire on the car Jenkins was in recurred throughout the five days of Chamblin’s trial. Aside from Shakir Terry, who was in the car with Jenkins and was essentially an uninvolved bystander, Bauer was the last person to have text and verbal contact with Jenkins.

Bauer had contacted Jenkins through Facebook the morning of the shooting, essentially luring him to the Circle K station on Palm Coast Parkway and Belle Terre Parkway about 40 minutes before the shooting. Jenkins was looking to buy “molly” from him, the drug also known as ecstasy. The two men are seen greeting each other and talking outside the Circle K. Meanwhile Bauer and Chamblin are exchanging texts. Video surveillance caught Chamblin approaching on foot from wherever Bauer is believed to have dropped him off earlier, his weapon hidden under a poncho.

Chamblin would eventually hide in the brush between the Circle K and a pawn shop, waiting for the moment when Jenkins was back in the car and Bauer had driven away, to spring out, fire 16 shots at the car, then flee the scene. He and Bauer then contacted each other several times as Bauer was trying to find him, after they had flubbed the pick-up location. Then it was in Bauer’s car that Bauer, Chamblin and Humphrey drove to Palatka. It was in Bauer’s car that they drove to Virginia the next day. It was in Bauer’s car that, five weeks after the murder, when Bauer was in Clay County, police found what Assistant State Attorney Jason Lewis called a “treasure trove of evidence,” including the camouflage pants and gray hoodie Chamblin wore at the time of the shooting, and the notebook where Chamblin wrote lyrics that appeared to describe the murder and how he felt about it later.




As it was during Chamblin’s trial, the most damning evidence against Bauer is on video. In the Chamblin rial, prosecutor juxtaposed the way the hooded figure walked–with its distinctive gait–with video of Chamblin walking in front of a sheriff’s deputy, proving that it was the same walk, and therefore the same man who was seen fleeing the scene of the shooting. For Bauer, the prosecution can juxtapose the moments when he was talking with Jenkins outside the Circle K with video of Chamblin walking through the spine of businesses east of the Circle K as he stealthily (or so he thought_ made his way to the gas station to take position. Bauer, in other words, was priming Jenkins for death.

If he were to face another jury in Bauer’s case, Lewis can repeat what he told the Chamblin jury: “There is a lot of evidence in this case ladies and gentlemen and it’s a lot of stuff we’re going to present to you,” he’d said, “I ask you to pay careful attention. But after you hear all the evidence and you see all the pieces fit together, There’ll be no question in your mind that–” and here Lewis can just substitute Bauer’s name, with a variation. He did not kill Deon Jenkins. But he brought him to slaughter.

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