Carjacking Defendants Waive Right to Test More DNA Evidence

By Laura Berol - August 20, 2024
Carjacking | Court | Daily Stories | Suspects |

Five co-defendants in a carjacking conspiracy case heard the results of additional DNA testing and some of them waived their rights to independently test the evidence at a hearing in front of DC Superior Court Judge Robert Okun on Aug. 19.

Byron Gillum, Jaelen Jordan, Isaiah Flowers, Jahkai Goff, and Irshaad Ellis-Bey, all 19 years old, are charged with two counts of armed carjacking, armed carjacking of a senior citizen, trafficking stolen property, four counts of unauthorized use of a vehicle, receiving stolen property of $1,000 or more, six counts of possession of a firearm during a crime of violence, two counts of robbery while armed, robbery of a senior citizen while armed and conspiracy.

The charges stem from their alleged involvement in an ongoing distribution of carjacked vehicles between April and May of 2023. Court records state these operations partially took place in an apartment parking garage on the 1300 block of Florida Avenue, NE.

At the hearing, Gillum, Jordan, Goff and Ellis-Bey waived their rights to independently test DNA evidence recovered from a Porsche that police investigators recovered on Feb. 27, 2023. The prosecutor said that evidence was inconclusive.

Lisbeth Sapirstein, the defense attorney for Ellis-Bey, told the court he was waiving his rights to test DNA evidence presented at an earlier hearing. Gillum and Jordan had already waived their rights to test that evidence.

Donna Beasley, Goff’s defense attorney, asked for more time to review DNA evidence she received on Friday. According to Beasley, the report on one item alone was over 400 pages long.

The prosecutor read the results of DNA testing conducted on a 2022 BMW X6 and on several firearms and magazines. Some of the test results seemed to implicate Goff.

Flowers has not yet asserted or waived any rights to independent DNA testing. Michael Madden, his defense attorney, said Flowers will make a decision after all his DNA test results become available.

Judge Okun definitively scheduled the trial for Oct. 25, 2025, which had been suggested as a tentative trial date at an earlier hearing.

Beasley objected that Goff will have been in detention for much more than a year by Oct. 25, 2025. She asked for an earlier trial date for Goff, separate from his co-defendants, but Judge Okun denied her request.

Parties are scheduled to reconvene on Nov. 1.