jmccann@heraldsun.com; 419-6601
DURHAM — Whether first-degree murder defendant Shannon Crawley spends the rest of her life in prison is in the hands of 12 Durham residents.
A jury on Friday began deliberating her fate. Crawley is charged with killing N.C. Central University graduate student Denita Smith in January 2007 at Campus Crossings apartments on East Cornwallis Road.
Jurors on Monday are expected to resume deliberations.
During deliberations Friday, the jury sent presiding Superior Court Judge Ronald Stephens a written question asking to visit Campus Crossings. He denied the request. Stephens said the scene there wouldn’t be like it was in 2007. Defense lawyer C. Scott Holmes wanted to make sure jurors were instructed not to drop by the former crime scene over the weekend.
“Don’t go back over there,” the judge told jurors before releasing them for the weekend.
During his closing argument before the jury got the case, Holmes said Crawley was caught up in a cycle of abuse that more or less kept her under the control of Greensboro police officer Jermeir Jackson-Stroud.
Jackson-Stroud and Crawley were once lovers, but the police officer was engaged to Smith at the time of her murder. Assistant District Attorney David Saacks told jurors Crawley envied that relationship, and that’s why she killed Smith.
Jurors have seen and heard Durham Police Department investigator Shawn Pate on a 2007 videotaped interview ask Crawley why she lived in such close proximity to Jackson-Stroud if she was so afraid of him. But Holmes used his closing argument to tell jurors abusers know how to keep victims within reach.
Jackson-Stroud is the one who killed Smith, Holmes claimed. Holmes went on to attack Pate both for not thoroughly investigating Jackson-Stroud and for admitting he neither could prove nor disprove the Greensboro police officer took the life of his fiancée.
“That’s reasonable doubt,” said Holmes, trying to prompt jurors to rule in Crawley’s favor.
The judge has instructed jurors to come back with a verdict of first-degree murder, second-degree murder or not guilty.
“We lost a star,” Saacks said at the opening of his closing argument.
The prosecutor was talking about Smith, who wrote stories and snapped pictures for the Campus Echo, NCCU’s newspaper. Saacks said Smith — she was at NCCU working on a master’s degree in English — at this point in her life should have been covering stories like the journalists in the courtroom chronicling Crawley’s trial.
Instead, Smith’s life was clipped by a bullet. Saacks dangled that bullet in a plastic bag so jurors could see it.
Crawley fired that bullet, Saacks said.
