PITTSBURGH (AP) - Jurors resume deliberations Tuesday in the case against the remaining defendant in the slayings of five people and an unborn baby at a western Pennsylvania cookout almost four years ago.
Closing arguments were delivered Monday in the Allegheny County trial of 33-year-old Cheron Shelton, who is charged with first- and third-degree murder in the March 2016 slayings in Pittsburgh’s Wilkinsburg suburb.
Charges were dismissed earlier against Shelton’s co-defendant, 31-year-old Robert Thomas. Authorities had alleged that he opened fire on one side and Shelton gunned down victims running onto a porch for safety. They allege the target, who survived, was a person Shelton believed was involved in the 2013 murder of a friend.
Prosecutors called a a cell phone tower specialist, a forensic pathologist and a crime lab ballistics specialist as their final witnesses. The defense put on the stand only Shelton’s mother, who was called earlier as a prosecution witness.
Defense attorney Randall McKinney argued that evidence cited by prosecutors could be interpreted in more benign ways. He urged jurors to resist the natural impulse to hold someone accountable because “the evidence in this case, the lack of evidence in this case, proves to us that the only appropriate verdict is not guilty.”
Deputy District Attorney Kevin Chernosky acknowledged that the case was circumstantial but said “the circumstances don’t lie to you.” He said each piece of evidence taken by itself wouldn’t be enough but “the combined effect of all of them is not innocence. It’s evidence.”
Prosecutors have said they will seek capital punishment in the event of a first-degree murder conviction.
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