Defense picks at prosecution case in murder trial over Columbus rapper’s shooting
A Columbus man’s fate was in the hands of a jury Monday after attorneys made their closing arguments in the murder trial of Jordan Jamal Seldon, accused of killing rapper Jaylin Jaquan “Bart” Williams during a failed robbery in midtown.
Seldon, 24, faces life in prison if convicted of fatally shooting Williams on his front porch on Wallace Drive four years ago, on Aug. 1, 2019. Police say Seldon and two other men intended to rob the 21-year-old of any valuables he had on him as he stepped outside the house.
Their attempt to ambush Williams backfired when Williams pulled his own gun and started shooting, triggering a gunfight that prompted his would-be robbers to flee, leaving Williams dying on his porch, shot through the heart with a 9-millimeter bullet, authorities said.
Afterward Seldon and accomplice Christian Desean Patrick ran back to Patrick’s car on East Lindsey Drive and fled, according to Patrick’s testimony last week. They abandoned cohort Gerald Wayne Reed III, who left his phone in Seldon’s car and lost his shoes running away, so he began walking the neighborhood, after 11 p.m. on a rainy night, asking residents if he could use their phone, police said.
The neighbors called 911, and officers questioned Reed that night before releasing him at the Fairview Drive home of then-girlfriend Anna Elizabeth Stecenko, who drove him back to Wallace Drive to collect a gun and camouflage jacket he had hidden in a vacant house there, she testified.
Stecenko and Reed disassembled the .45-caliber Glock and hid it in Harris County, where investigators later recovered the firearm. They also found Williams’ 9-millimeter pistol that jammed during the shootout.
But the 9-millimeter used to shoot Williams was never found, and Patrick’s testimony that Seldon was armed with the weapon was crucial to the prosecution’s case.
So, prosecutor Lewis Lamb agreed to dismiss Patrick’s charges in exchange for his testimony, though Patrick admitted his role in the foiled robbery that led to Williams’ death.
Though Reed’s statements to police led to their unraveling the robbery scheme and arresting four suspects, including Reed and Stecenko, Lamb never called Reed to testify, relying instead on Patrick and Stecenko to tell jurors what happened.
Defense blasts testimony
Defense attorney Mike Garner emphasized that in his closing, telling jurors that the law said they could not convict his client solely on the uncorroborated testimony of a co-defendant, and that Patrick and Stecenko were not credible witnesses.
“The testimony of an accomplice alone is not sufficient to warrant a conviction,” the attorney said.
Then he asked the jurors about the prosecutors’ case. “Do they have an independent witness in this case? No, not a single witness.”
He said Stecenko repeatedly lied to police before.
“She has lied from beginning to end in this case.” If jurors thought it a “reasonable possibility” that Stecenko lied on the witness stand, then they had enough “reasonable doubt” to find Seldon not guilty, he said.
Garner maintained that Seldon was not there when the shooting happened, and that another man police have not charged killed Williams.
Reed and Stecenko are not on trial because each pleaded guilty to lesser charges last year, agreeing to testify in the trial if summoned:
Stecenko, 24, pleaded guilty only to tampering with evidence, and faces 10 years in prison with six to serve.
Reed, 25, pleaded to aggravated assault and using a gun to commit a felony. He faces up to 25 years in prison.
They are to be sentenced after the trial. Patrick, who has spent four years in jail awaiting trial, is to be freed afterward, said his attorney, Angela Dillon.
Lamb is the district attorney in Americus, Georgia, who was assigned the case because Columbus District Attorney Stacey Jackson in his former private practice represented Patrick, presenting a conflict of interest.
