Jury asks to see 2 pieces of evidence in trial of 19-year-old charged in deadly 2023 mass shooting in Baltimore
Jury deliberations continued Friday in the retrial of a teen accused of killing a 16-year-old and wounding four others in a shooting in Baltimore in 2023.
Daaon Spears, now 19, is charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder in the shooting in the parking lot of the Edmondson Village Shopping Center on January 4, 2023.
Deanta Dorsey, a 16-year-old sophomore at Edmondson-Westside High School, was shot 16 times. He died and four of his classmates were hurt. Spears and another murder suspect, Bryan Johnson, were arrested. They were both 16 at the time of the shooting. Johnson is being tried separately. The prosecutor said Johnson's DNA was found on a gun magazine at the scene.
Surveillance images are at the heart of the case against Spears, who prosecutors allege planned the mass shooting.
Spears is on trial for the second time. His first trial, in October 2024, ended in a mistrial when jurors couldn't agree on a verdict.
The prosecution and defense rested their cases in the second trial Thursday. The jury began deliberations and was released around 4:30 p.m. without reaching a verdict.
Jury asks to see evidence
Jurors sent the judge a note on Friday morning with two questions. The first question they asked was, "Why can't we get camera footage from the front of the Edmonton Village shopping plaza, Rita's?"
The judge explained that no video from Rita's was introduced into evidence and told jurors to rely on their memories of witness testimony and video evidence.
The second question was whether the jurors could see a pair of shoes that the prosecution said Spears was wearing during the alleged murder.
The shoes were given to the jurors.
There have been no more questions or updates since.
Daaon Spears trial
For Spears, the stakes are high. He faces life in prison if convicted.
During his closing argument, Spears' attorney Brandon Taylor worked to cast doubt in the minds of the jury, framing the evidence against his client as entirely circumstantial and telling them the police work in the case was not thorough.
He claimed officers made the arrest under pressure from the public and officials to solve the high-profile case.
"He followed a tip, locked up Mr. Spears and built his case around that," Taylor said.
Of the video that featured prominently in the state's case, Taylor asked jurors, "Can you really see who's shooting? Reasonable doubt."
He noted a lack of DNA evidence and fingerprints in the case against his client.
"Convicting an innocent man is not justice," Taylor said. "It's another tragedy."
He told the court, "The state has not proven Mr. Spears is even involved in this incident."
Taylor also noted the alleged murder weapon continued to be used in acts of violence long after his client was arrested.
Video evidence
Assistant State's Attorney Rita Wisthoff-Ito walked jurors through various clips of surveillance video and pictures for more than an hour in her closing argument. She explained how cameras tracked Spears before, during, and after the shooting.
"He's got a job to do. He's going to kill Deanta Dorsey," Wisthoff-Ito told jurors of Spears.
She said the mass shooting was "clearly planned."
"They were just sitting there talking. The victims literally had nothing to do with this," Wisthoff-Ito said.
She described the killing of Dorsey as an "execution," stressing that he was shot 16 times that day.
Spears' mother previously identified him to police when shown surveillance video, an identification the defense alleged detectives coerced. On the witness stand in this trial, she said she could not identify him in the videos.
"Their family is one of hundreds of families that have had to go through this in the past," said the Dorsey family's attorney Thiru Vignarajah. "Slowly but surely, may there be fewer families who have to experience this horrific, unimaginable nightmare."
