See the trial in pictures here.
By the time Assistant State Attorney Jason Lewis was done wrapping up the case against Marcus Chamblin in the murder of Deon Jenkins outside a Palm Coast Circle K, he’d left the jury no choice. Not that the evidence he and Assistant State Attorney Mark Johnson had marshaled for four days of trial last week had done any less. But Lewis is a prosecutorial guillotine: his blade, when it slices through the defense in closing arguments, servers all doubt.
After deliberating for just 48 minutes, a stunningly short amount that betrayed the inevitability of the case, a jury of 12 today–eight women, four men, three of the jurors black— found Marcus Avery Chamblin guilty of first-degree murder in the shooting death of Deon O’Neal Jenkins the morning of Oct. 12, 2019 at the Circle K off Palm Coast Parkway.
The jury found him guilty of attempted second degree murder in the wounding of Shakir Terry. He was also found guilty of shooting into an occupied vehicle.Terry was at the wheel of his car, with Jenkins in the passenger seat, as they idled in a parking spot that morning.
Jenkins’s mother wept the moment the verdict was announced. Chamblin did not react.
The defense waived any pre-sentence investigation. Circuit Judge Terence Perkins sentenced Chamblin to life in prison on the murder count, 30 years on the second-degree attempted murder charge, and 15 years on the third count.
He was 25 when he killed Jenkins. He has been at the Flagler County jail since January 2021. He is 29. The jury had been told ahead of trial that the state was not asking for the death penalty.
Derrius Bauer, the last man to speak with Jenkins other than Terry that morning, goes on trial on the same charges in September, assuming he doesn’t plead out before then. Bauer and Chamblin were friends and had been partying together that night at the Red Roof Inn, with another friend called Jarod Humphrey. Bauer drove Chamblin to the area of the shooting scene, enabling him to dissimulate himself through the back spine of businesses along Palm Coast Parkway before he sprung out of brush and shot at Terry’s car.
In criminal trials the prosecution gets to deliver two closing arguments, sandwiching the defense’s portion. Assistant State Attorney Mark Johnson and Terence Lenamon, the defense attorney, delivered their closings in that order–Johnson with the surgical, flawless precision of a bloodhound marshaling broadsides of evidence, Lenamon counterpunching with the incendiary claim that cops knowingly pinned the murder on the wrong guy (which would itself be a crime), and that they bought and paid $2,000 for the testimony of the real murderer–Humphrey–to pin it on his client: Marcus Chamblin.
Lenamon, a South Florida lawyer, was clearly playing on jurors who may not presumptively consider police beyond reproach.
“We inherently want to believe that the police department will do a job that’s fair to all,” Lenamon told the jury, “that when they investigate individuals, that they will investigate in a way that doesn’t suggest or direct. We all trust the police department, rightfully so. They are truly our guardians of justice. But every once in a while, an overzealous individual or group of individuals crosses that line, as it happened in this particular case.”
Lenamon had it in for the Flagler County Sheriff’s Augustin Rodriguez, a detective whose self-confidence can easily be mistaken for cockiness, but whose effectiveness cannot as easily be mistaken for overzealousness–certainly not in a case involving hundreds of interviews, search warrants and subpoenas, thousands of miles traveled and 15 months of toil.
But that was Lenamon’s claim: that Humphrey, not Chamblin, was the killer, and that in his interviews with Humphrey, Rodriguez gave away so much evidence that Humphrey could reconstruct it in his favor and cover his tracks.
Lenamon made these claims within nothing like the evidence the state submitted in four days of trial–circumstantial evidence, to be sure, but in its parts, even without witness testimony (DNA, video, cell phone tracking, Facebook messages, rap lyrics, photographs) unassailable and often directly incriminating evidence. He made these claims with nothing more than a theory: that Jenkins was a “drug addict,” that Humphrey was a “drug dealer,” and that somehow, though there never was any evidence of contact between Jenkins and Humphrey, Humphrey killed Jenkins. Why? Nobody knows.
“How come they never checked Mr. Humphrey’s DNA with this clothing?” Lenamon asked, referring to the grayish hoodie and camouflage pants the killer is seen wearing, in a dozen surveillance video clips, on his way to and from the shooting. The most substantial amount of DNA found on the items, by far, was that of CHamblin, with three other contributors. “I’m not saying this wasn’t worn by Mr. Humphrey. I’m saying it was. And what was his motive to kill Mr. Jenkins? I don’t have a smoking gun . But I do know that him and Mr. Bauer hung out together in front of this gas station.”
The prosecution did not have a smoking gun to explain Chamblin’s killing of Jenkins, either. All it had were vague claims by Chamblin’s brother, D’Shawn Hosang, corroborated by a friend of Hosang’s, that the night of the killing, he’d thrown Jenkins out of his grandparents’ house, where he (Hosang) and Jenkins had been staying. It was never clear why. The most that made it into the evidence stream was a ridiculous argument about a pizza.
But something more deep-seated may have happened. What Johnson, the assistant state attorney, did tell the jury today was “a dispute that involved Deon Jenkins threatening their grandparents.” The threat may have been retaliation for a secret about himself Jenkins did not want revealed (he was bi-sexual, according to Terry).
Chamblin had acquired the Draco, an AK-47-style assault weapon, with money lent to him by Humphrey. He and Bauer left the Red Roof Inn as Humphrey was supposedly getting his hair braided, and they coordinated the hit. The next day Chamblin, Bauer and Humphrey drove to Palatka, then back to Virginia, where the trio lived. Chamblin, who referred to the weapon as his “baby,” found a man called Scorpio to keep his weapon for him for a while, knowing that it was incriminating. Cell data traced all of those travels as it did reams of social media messages.
Sheriff’s detectives also recovered a pink notebook Chamblin kept, in which he wrote the lyrics to a rap song that, to the prosecution, amount to a confession:
“It’s what we call a circumstantial case,” Lewis told the jury, “and each piece of a circumstantial case inferentially pushes you to the conclusion of what happened.” He illustrated his point with pieces of a puzzle gradually coming together in overhead screens. “A circumstantial case is different pieces put together to show you. And as you keep seeing the pieces of evidence in this case come together, each piece of evidence absolutely, positively shows Marcus Chamberlain is the killer. And if you keep watching every piece of evidence, nothing with Mr. Humphrey, as our puzzle comes together, you’re going to see again, what does that puzzle reveal? It reveals the killer.”
All the case’s principal investigators from the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office were in the courtroom today–Darrell Butler, Augustin Rodriguez, George Hristakopoulos, Nicole Quintieri (now an investigator with the State Attorney’s Office), though in effect the case involved dozens of other detectives and deputies at the agency. More than two dozen students from Matanzas High School Law and Justice Academy also attended closing arguments.
“I’m thankful the jury connected all the evidence, so justice was served for the victim and his family. Now this killer will have the rest of his life behind bars to regret his decision to take the life of another young man,” Sheriff Rick Staly said in a statement issued this afternoon. Staly had authorized unprecedented resources in the investigation, trusting his detectives to lead the way. In most ways, today’s verdict was more culmination than anything else, the investigation having done the heavy lifting. “In 2021, after a 15-month-long investigation, we got him and his accomplice off the streets. Thanks to the amazing team of investigators who pursued this murderer across the nation, and to the thorough prosecutors with the 7th Judicial Court, he will never get the chance to take another life again.”
Jenkins was wearing a bright orange hoodie when he was shot in the heart. The jury had seen him in the hoodie in one of the clips from surveillance video, as he walked to shake hands and speak with Bauer outside the Circle K in his last minutes of life.
For four days of trial last week, the hoodie, splayed on a large whiteboard and covered in clear wrapping, sat behind the clerk near the jury after it was authenticated by a crime scene technician. The hoody’s dark lining, where Jenkins’s face would have been, faced the courtroom. The state couldn’t have created a more sepulchral effect had it tried.
The hoodie was back today. But the prosecutors had placed it on the other side of the courtroom, smack in front of Chamblin. It could not possibly have been accidental.
Charles says
Do the crime pay the time.
Concerned Citizens says
It’s such a Shame, Shame, that all these young men are losing their life to LIFE IN PRISON for murder.ing people. Who gives you the right to take another person’s life, when things don’t go their way. The victims have a Mother, Father, Sisters, Brothers, Cousins, Aunts, Uncles, Friends and maybe Children. They belong to someone and these people are killing them. Sorry, but Not SORRY. You kill, then you spend the rest of your LIFE behind bars and think about what you did, for the rest of your LIFE. Shame on you!
But remember…God sees it All. And they will be Judged again in the end.
Doug says
Bye, bye.
JimboXYZ says
I suspect the next prosecution doesn’t end well for the accused/defense either. Nobody should have to go to a Circle K for gasoline or a lottery ticket & coincide with this level of criminal activity, an ambush of a murder that is little more than a copy cat crime for a Vegas hit in Palm Coast, FL.
Joe D says
At least the jury saw through the witness’ lies ( when he completely REVERSED his prior testimony).
It’s unfortunate that such YOUNG men have made such TERRIBLE life decisions affecting the rest of their lives, but today, there is LITTLE to NO respect for ANY life! Sorry another young man is dead because of that disregard for human life.
Enough already says
From what I have been reading Deon Jenkins was no “PILLAR OF THE COMMUNITY “ either.
Multiple arrests for drug sales and domestic violence (Flagler County Sheriff inmate search, Florida arrests and mugshots.com )
Good riddance to both of them.
Joe D says
Just because Deon Jenkins was no choir boy, does not mean that he deserved to be gunned down in the street.
Street gun violence seems to be the method of CHOICE nowadays for settling ANY dispute, no matter how trivial.
Murder ( not self defense) is never justified, no matter WHO the victim is!
Remember that old biblical saying: “Judge not, less you be judged.”
As a family and child Nurse therapist, and Certified Nurse Case Manager, before retirement, our treatment teams ALWAYS had the hope that an individual, however DAMAGED, would have the POTENTIAL to turn their lives around. Sometimes it WORKED, but SADLY, sometimes in DID NOT….but there is that little thing called….HOPE!
Head Shaker says
I guess you live in a “GATED COMMUNITY” ?