The trial for Delonte Wynn finally boiled down to closing statements on Wednesday afternoon.
Only one witness was called for the defense before the end of the trial. Wynn is charged with the murder of Darlene Bryant.
Kaleb Berhane works for Wynn’s attorney in the Superior Court, where he is a primary defense investigator. His job was crucial to the defense since he was the one to get statements from key witnesses. One of the most controversial testimonies in this case was that of Donnell Howard, who has been accused of changing his story in order to shorten his current sentence and receive a reward of $25,000. Howard claimed on the stand that if any parts of his earlier testimonies didn’t match up it was because Berhane rushed him. During his testimony, however, Berhane claimed that he never rushed Howard and gave him the option to leave at any point throughout the interview.
Berhane was the only witness called by the defense, leaving the jury without any statement from the suspect, Wynn. Wynn remained silent in his seat throughout the entirety of the trial other than to introduce himself every morning to the judge and the jury.
The prosecution gave a closing statement, going through every single testimony and piece of evidence that had been brought to the courtroom. Their interpretation of the evidence claims that Bryant’s murder was pre-meditated. They referred to text threads and phone calls between Wynn, his girlfriend, and Bryant. Although Wynn’s girlfriend claims that Wynn was calm in the moments leading up to Bryant’s death, the prosecution argues the opposite. The video footage from the Geraldine Apartments catches an assumed-to-be Wynn walking towards the complex and then running away from it moments later. The DNA samples from the crime scene, while not matching Wynn, do not entirely suggest his absence since he did not have to touch her to stab her, the prosecution said. As for Howard’s testimony, the prosecution used evidence from the scene of the crime to corroborate his story — $4 and a lemonade bottle, which Howard claims to have bought for her moments before she was killed. Additionally, the prosecution emphasized the agreements made with both Howard and Charles King to reassure the jury that the two witnesses would not lie on the stand since they have to tell the truth to receive any benefits. The prosecution ended their statement by begging the jury to look at the evidence, to use “common sense” and to put Wynn in prison.
The defense, on the other hand, did not go through the evidence piece by piece. The testimonies given by Howard and King were the focal point of this closing statement, claiming that without these two “stories,” there is no evidence to convict Wynn — no DNA and no motive. As before, Wynn’s attorneys targeted the motives of Howard and King, trying to strip away legitimacy of each testimony. Howard claimed to have overheard an angry phone call conversation between Wynn and Bryant. The defense drew from this testimony, finding that the phone records show no phone call between the two. The defense emphasized the inconsistencies and begged the jury to keep an innocent man out of jail.
During these closing statements, different reactions came from the audience. The prosecution put a scowl on Wynn’s mother’s face. The defense left the mother of Darlene Bryant frustrated. When approached, Dolores Bryant said “I just want to leave this all behind when it’s over.”
