OAKLAND (BCN) — The defense lawyer for an Oakland man charged with two counts of murder for the fatal shootings of an 8-year-old girl and a 22-year-old man in separate shootings in 2013 told jurors Tuesday that there’s not enough evidence for a conviction.
In her opening statement in the trial of Darnell Williams, 25, who is charged in the deaths of 8-year-old Alaysha Carradine during a sleepover at an East Oakland home on July 17, 2013, and 22-year-old Anthony Medearis in Berkeley in an unrelated shooting seven weeks later, defense lawyer Deborah Levy said Williams wasn’t the shooter in either incident.
Levy said two key prosecution witnesses who connect Williams to the fatal shootings aren’t credible because they are prostitutes.
“These women are not believable,” she said. Levy told jurors, “Listen to the evidence, you have to connect the dots and there is not enough evidence, ladies and gentlemen.”
In his opening statement on Monday, prosecutor John Brouhard alleged that Williams carried out a “rampage of violence.”
Brouhard said Williams carried out the shooting that claimed Alaysha’s life at an apartment in the 3400 block of Wilson Street at about 11:15 p.m. in retaliation for the shooting death of 26-year-old Jermaine Davis in the 1800 block of Derby Street in Berkeley about four hours earlier.
Along with killing Alaysha, the shooting wounded two other children and a 63-year-old woman.
Brouhard said Davis was a close friend of Williams, who allegedly wanted to kill Antiown York, the man he thought had killed Davis. He fired shots into the apartment on Wilson Street because York’s ex-girlfriend, the mother of York’s children, lived there, the prosecutor said.
The mother wasn’t home when Williams opened fire but Williams fired 13 shots that struck Alaysha, York’s two young children and their grandmother, according to Brouhard.
The prosecutor alleged that Williams fatally shot Medearis in the 1400 block of Eighth Street in Berkeley in an unrelated incident about 5:45 p.m. on Sept. 8, 2013, because he thought that Medearis had “snitched” about his involvement in a previous robbery.
Brouhard said Williams also wanted to rob Medearis, who he confronted at a dice game, because he was out of money.
The prosecution is seeking the death penalty for Williams, who faces two counts of murder for the deaths of Alaysha and Medearis, three counts of attempted murder for the shooting on July 17, 2013, assault with a semi-automatic firearm for accidentally shooting his nephew in the face in the Berkeley incident and two counts of being an ex-felon in possession of a gun.
Williams also faces three special circumstance allegations: committing multiple murders, lying in wait in the shooting that claimed Alaysha’s life and killing Medearis during the course of an attempted robbery.