Nigel Dawson and William Brown found guilty of Tracy Crews murder

A camouflage ski mask with traces of William Brown’s DNA.

Jailhouse informants who said co-defendant Nigel Joseph Dawson confessed he fatally shot Tracy Crews, a Bloods gang member and convicted drug dealer, in the neck with a 9 mm luger inside the kitchen of his Whittaker Avenue residence on Sept. 12, 2008.

And Crews’ dying declaration, as told by his widow, Sheena Robinson-Crews, that Brown, known as “Paperboy,” was responsible for the murder of his close friend.

Those were the state’s strongest proofs in the Crews’ murder trial.

“Everything else,” Steven Lember, the attorney for Brown, surmised during summations, “was reasonable doubt.”

But on late Friday afternoon, after two days of deliberation a jury of 12 convicted Brown and Dawson on eight counts of felony murder, murder, robbery and weapons offenses, not quite how defense attorneys boldly predicted at the outset of an action-packed trial, defined by salacious allegations of a setup by Crews’ best man and former roommate, Brown, over $40,000 in drug proceeds.

“My client is very disappointed,” said Lember. “He put his good faith in the good sense of the jury. We have to respect the jury’s decision [but] don’t have to agree with it. I fully expect that my client will appeal this decision, and I believe there are significant appealable issues that emerged during the trial, and that’s what I’m going to counsel him to do.”

Nigel Dawson and William Brown are accused of the 2008 murder of Tracy Crews. (Submitted photos)

Nigel Dawson and William Brown are accused of the 2008 murder of Tracy Crews. (Submitted photos)

For Brown, 30, one of five men accused in the 2011 murder of U.S. Army veteran and Liberian immigrant Dardar Paye, it’s one murder charge down, another to go.

Edward Hesketh, Dawson’s defense attorney, believes jurors made the wrong decision.

“I feel that in some ways they should’ve taken a little longer,” said Hesketh. “For some reason they changed their minds in the last hour and they elected to find our clients guilty. I just disagree with it.”

Barbara Portis, Crews’ mother, testified after a judge ruled the state was allowed to present evidence of Crews’ dying declaration – a late coup for Assistant Prosecutor Al Garcia after another judge had previously ruled it was unreliable and excluded it from evidence.

The prosecutor, Garcia, after salvaging a possible mistrial because of evidentiary issues that caused repeated delays in testimony, seemed confident the state met its burden of proof, emboldened by crucial testimony from jailhouse informants Isaiah Franklin and Terrell Black.

Defense attorneys, in cobbling together a third-party guilt defense that relied on testimony of a Pennsylvania inmate, accused Robinson-Crews of having a hand in her husband’s murder, attacking her lack of cooperation and repeated lies in the hours after her husband’s death as proof she was trying to stymie law enforcement and hide her involvement.

They put Maria Cappelli, a cellmate of Robinson-Crews for four months at the state prison in Muncy, Pa., where Robinson-Crews served time on a drug conviction, on the stand and she testified that Robinson-Crews admitted in 2009 she set up her husband’s murder because he was physically and emotionally abusive.

The state, while acknowledging the case pitted jailhouse informants against each other, implored the jury to disregard Cappelli’s testimony as a fantastical story spun by a woman arrested more than 200 times and who has a history of lying to the police about her own name.

Garcia said Cappelli’s account, rife with factual errors, had been investigated and ultimately dismissed by Gary Britton, the lead police detective in the Crews murder case.

But the defense said Cappelli, unlike the state’s informants, had no incentive to fabricate or embellish her testimony that Robinson-Crews admitted she handed keys to the couple’s apartment to two unnamed gang members and waited outside while her husband went inside to put their then-2-year-old daughter to bed.

She got no time off her sentence or any extra benefit for her testimony; Franklin and Black were released from the county jail the same day they provided statements to the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office and have negotiated plea deals that are contingent on them providing testimony for the state in a handful of cases.

If there was a point in the murder trial when defense attorneys had to feel good about their chances, it came during Black’s testimony. In the middle of contentious cross examination, Lember suddenly dropped a series of Robert Frost-like lines.

While locked up in a county jail, the attorney wanted to know, did Black ever hear the expressions, “Don’t go to the pen; send a friend”; or, “If you can’t do the time, drop a dime”?

The jury burst into laughter; even Black cracked a smile.

While Lember’s questions introduced some levity into an otherwise serious arena, they also seemed out of place.

But legal observers believe Lember’s tactics were a strategic way of gauging his connection with the jury.

The date of sentencing is set for April 10, but it is subject to change.

-Trentonian reporter Jada Vanderpool contributed to this report.

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