By GREG BLUESTEIN
Associated Press Writer
ATLANTA- Jurors began deliberating Monday in the case of two men accused of slaying a newly elected sheriff after a prosecutor called the key witnesses “snakes” and a defense attorney labeled them “liars.”
Melvin Walker and David Ramsey each face a dozen federal charges - including murder-for-hire - in the 2000 shooting of DeKalb Sheriff-elect Derwin Brown.
The defense during the two-week trial has tried to cast doubt on the credibility of Patrick Cuffy and Paul Skyers, two conspirators granted immunity by local prosecutors.
Brown was shot 16 times in front of his home in December 2000, just days before he was to have succeeded DeKalb Sheriff Sidney Dorsey.
Walker and Ramsey were acquitted in a state trial in 2002, but Dorsey was convicted of plotting the murder in a separate trial and is serving a life sentence. He remains the only defendant convicted in Brown’s murder.
In his closing argument Monday, attorney Xavier Dicks told jurors the government erred in granting immunity to the real shooters and is now desperate for a guilty plea.
“Don’t be fooled for a second,” Dicks said. “This case is not about justice, it’s about justification.”
Federal prosecutors also attacked the deal, struck by then-DeKalb District Attorney J. Tom Morgan in 2001.
“The absolute immunity given to two killers makes you furious but there’s nothing you can do about it,” prosecutor Bobbi Bernstein told the jurors, adding that the two suspects and two witnesses together made “four snakes - not two.”
She tried to focus the court’s attention on the defendants by reminding jurors that involvement in a murder plot is enough for a conviction.
The federal prosecutors hope that newly introduced phone records linking the two defendants with Cuffy and Skyers will convince a jury to return a guilty verdict this time around. The records show Walker made 212 phone calls to Cuffy in the six months before Brown’s murder.
Defense attorneys contended that investigators still haven’t shown any physical evidence linking the suspects with Brown’s shooting.
“Cell phone records didn’t pull the trigger,” said defense attorney Max Richardson. “Mere association with someone is not enough to convict someone.”
Brown was elected to the sheriff’s office on an anti-corruption platform.