Jury in Howard trial takes field trip

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By Kurt Allemeier | Saturday, March 3, 2007 1:00 AM CST | () comments

A pair of trips wrapped up much of the testimony and evidence portion of the first-degree murder trial of Rasheem Bogan and Don White Jr. on Friday in Scott County District Court, Davenport.

Jurors were taken to a garage in the Scott County Jail during the morning session to see the van prosecutors say Bogan and White were in during the drive-by shooting Aug. 19 that killed 19-year-old Vincelina Howard and completed the state’s case.

Bogan and White are each charged with first-degree murder and intimidation. White is also charged with willful injury with serious injury. Both the prosecution and defense rested Friday, but more rebuttal testimony could be given Monday before closing arguments. The earliest the jury would begin deliberations is Monday afternoon.

In the afternoon, testimony centered around whether a defense witness was at a Metro Youth drum corps competition in Waterloo rather than in Rock Island for a memorial walk for Andrell Hearn and a cookout afterward. Jerri Jones, 16, Hearn’s sister, testified that she saw Bogan at the cookout around the time Howard was shot. Police say the shooting occurred about 10:35 p.m. At times during her testimony she offered vague answers regarding times she was picked up and what she knew about the party.

Two rebuttal witnesses, Darius Abbey and his younger sister, Saraunna Abbey, testified that Jones was at the Metro Youth competition that didn’t return to Rock Island until midnight. The Abbeys testified that they are Howard’s cousins.

Darius Abbey, 17, who attended the competition, pointed out a girl he said was Jones in a grainy video of the Metro Youth performance. When asked about the dates of the other Metro Youth performances on that included the Waterloo appearance, Abbey said he couldn’t remember all of them.

“I don’t know any of the dates of the competition except the date my cousin was shot,” he told Bogan’s defense attorney, Murray Bell.

Saraunna Abbey, 14, testified that she attended the memorial walk and spoke to Jones by cell phone from Waterloo. She told the court that Jones wanted her to call when they said a prayer during the walk. She tried to call at that time but Jones didn’t answer.

Other defense witnesses also testified to seeing Bogan and White at the memorial walk and cookout. Witness Jesse Howard, also a cousin of Vincelina Howard’s, said he saw White at various times throughout the night at the cookout before he left between midnight and 12:30 a.m.

Friday morning, the jury wound its way through the first floor of the Scott County Jail to where the late-model, bluish-silver Dodge Caravan waited. During the viewing, White, by agreement with his attorney, Dave Treimer, placed his hand on the outside of the minivan where a the defendant’s partial palmprint was taken by police.

Also during the viewing, jurors were guided to view where a window crank on the driver’s side door was located.

During the van viewing, photographs were taken by local newspaper reporters using their cell phone cameras, requiring Judge J. Hobart Darbyshire to make a record of the cameras use as part of expanded media coverage for the trial. Neither side objected to use of any photos from the jail garage as long as they didn’t show the defendants nor the jury.

A photo of the van and Scott County Attorney Bill Davis and defense attorney Murray Bell appeared on the Quad-City Times Web site, www.qctimes.com.

Kurt Allemeier can be contacted at (563) 383-2360 or kallemeier@qctimes.com.