FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Four men made a decision. One man was murdered because of it, according to Broward prosecutors.
Now a jury is being asked to convict three of the defendants accused of robbing and murdering Jahseh Onfroy, 20, an aspiring rapper known to audiences as XXXTentacion.
Or to set them free.
Closing arguments in the trial of Dedrick Williams, Michael Boatwright and Trayvon Newsome began on Tuesday and are scheduled to end Wednesday morning in front of Broward Circuit Judge Michael Usan. Assistant State Attorney Pascale Achille again laid out the case against the three men by focusing on the evidence presented at trial, the video showing the crime, social media posts showing the defendants gloating with the victim’s money.
Robert Allen, the fourth man, pleaded guilty last year and testified against the men he calls his co-conspirators. Achille identified Boatwright and Newsome as the gunmen. Williams and Allen were accomplices. But under the law, Achille said, all four are equally responsible for the fatal shooting of Onfroy, who was ambushed outside Riva Motorsports in Deerfield Beach.
Onfroy had just withdrawn $50,000 from a nearby bank to buy a motorcycle with cash, Achille said. He kept the money in a Louis Vitton bag he carried with him, a bag that did not go unnoticed by the four robbers scoping out Riva for a victim, Achille said.
Defense lawyers George Reres, representing Newsome, and Mauricio Padilla, representing Williams, argued that investigators and prosecutors rushed to judgment against their clients, and that Allen, who faces the same possible life sentence as his co-defendants, is simply lying to curry favor with the judge and secure a reduced sentence.
Allen did not reach any formal deal with prosecutors in exchange for his testimony and plea, but Padilla intimated that the deal was implied — Allen would not testify if he did not think he had anything to gain, Padilla said.
Padilla also made a passing reference to what he called the “failure” of investigators to seriously consider as a suspect hip-hop star Aubrey Graham, better known as Drake. Months before his murder, Onfroy’s Instagram account was used to post a message claiming Drake would be responsible if XXXTentacion were to be murdered. Onfroy later deleted the message and said he was hacked.
Efforts to secure Drake’s testimony continued throughout the trial, but he was ruled out as a suspect early in the investigation and never offered his account of any friction he might have had with XXXTentacion.
An attorney representing Boatwright is scheduled to deliver his closing argument on Wednesday morning, followed by a final argument from prosecutors. Deliberations should begin Wednesday afternoon.
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