This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Crime & Safety

So Much Evidence, So Many Questions

Jurors in the murder trial of Dashawn Revels have their work cut out for them.

Attorneys for the prosecution and for the defense gave jurors in the Dashawn Revels murder trial a lot to think about when they made their final summations in New London Superior Court today.

Senior Assistant State’s Attorney David Smith began by recapping the evidence and testimony presented about the night of March 31, 2009, when 20-year-old Bryan Davila was fatally shot at the corner of Crystal Avenue and State Pier Road in New London.

With some 84 items entered into evidence, including photos and surveillance footage, shell casings and autopsy reports, 911 and interrogation recordings, there is a lot for the jury to review. In their final summations, however, Smith and defense attorney Bruce Sturman both offered very different interpretations of that evidence.

Find out what's happening in New Londonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

For instance, there were eight shell casings found at the scene and two bullets recovered from Davila’s body. They all came from a 22-caliber gun but the murder weapon was never found and the medical examiner couldn’t say with certainty whether they were fired from one gun or two. Davila was shot from both the front and the back. So were there two shooters, as the defense claimed, or did Davila turn and run, as the eyewitness claimed?  

Did the eyewitness have a clear view from her fifth-floor apartment on Crystal Avenue, some 265 feet from where the shooting occurred? Was the area well-lit, as the prosecution claimed, or too dark to see clearly at about 11 p.m. as the defense suggested. 

Find out what's happening in New Londonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Was it overly suggestive when police presented Dashawn Revels, alone and in handcuffs, to the witness for identification? As Sturman pointed out, the witness also identified another man as being at the scene when he was presented for her to identify in the same way, and it turned out that person hadn’t been at Crystal Avenue at all.

Revels camouflage jacket made him stand out from the crowd that night, but he was one of four young African American men at the scene of the shooting who were wearing red baseball caps and at least one other person besides Revels had braids. Could the eyewitness really be sure that Revels was the shooter based on his clothing?  

“This case rises and falls on the identification [by the eyewitness]” said Sturman. “And that identification is not reliable.”

Could Revels, who is right-handed, have fired a gun with a hard plaster cast on his broken right hand? Or did he use his left hand, as the eyewitness stated? Forensic scientists found no gunshot residue on his hands but could he have wiped it off when he emptied his pockets, as Smith suggested?

On the stand Revels admitted that he lied to the police during his interrogations. Was he lying because he was “scared,” and just wanted to go home, as Sturman suggested? Or was he making up a “story” because he’d have said anything to get out of trouble, as Smith suggested? And what, exactly, did Revels say on the tape?

“The state tells you he said, ‘I started shooting.’ I heard, ‘We started shooting,’” Sturman said. “He says eight times ‘I didn’t shoot that kid.’”

The two other people that Revels identified as the shooters during his testimony also lied to the police when they said they weren’t there that night, Sturman pointed out. Yet they weren’t facing murder charges, even though one of them fled the state immediately following the shooting.

The judge had cautioned the jurors that, though the defense had introduced “third-party culpability” to suggest that someone other than Revels committed the crime, they weren’t charged with figuring out who did it. They were only to consider whether Revels was guilty of murder. “Hopefully, you won’t be sidetracked by speculation,” Smith said in his summation.

From the defense perspective, however, all those questions add up to reasonable doubt. “Where’s the beef?” Sturman said, referring to what he saw as a lack of meat in the state’s evidence. “There is so much reasonable doubt the only verdict is not guilty.”

The one thing both attorneys would probably agree on is that whatever the jury decides, as Smith noted, “It won’t be easy.”

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?

To request removal of your name from an arrest report, submit these required items to arrestreports@patch.com.