Andrew Graham, a 23-year-old who was planning to start graduate school soon, was found dead after being shot in November 2009 in Centennial.

Courtesy photo

Other outcomes

Besides alleged gunman Terrell O’Neil Jones, who was arrested in March 2020, four other suspects were identified in the 2009 Centennial slaying of Andrew Graham. They allegedly acted as a group in attempting to rob Graham.

Allen Deshawn Ford, Clarissa Jae Lockhart, Kendall Adam Austin and Joseph Martin were arrested after a grand jury in Arapahoe County, called in 2016, indicted the four.

Lockhart, Austin and Ford originally were charged with first-degree felony murder, a count that could be charged against anyone in a group that is allegedly involved in a serious crime in which a death occurs. The charge applied even if a particular member of the group is not believed to have directly caused the death.

Lockhart, Austin and Ford also were charged with conspiracy and a pattern of racketeering — which generally relates to organized crime — under the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act, according to online court records and the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office.

The codefendants’ outcomes were as follows:

• Ford was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Jan. 17, 2020, after taking a plea deal in November 2019, pleading guilty to racketeering, according to online court records. The felony murder and conspiracy charges were dismissed. His sentence includes five years of mandatory parole.

• Lockhart received a 10-year prison sentence on June 26, 2020, after she pleaded guilty on Feb. 27, 2020, to a racketeering charge. Her charges of conspiracy and felony murder were dismissed as part of her plea deal.

• Martin pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery and in February 2018 received a 10-year prison sentence and three years of mandatory parole, according to the state judicial branch. His other charge of felony murder was dismissed, according to court records.

• The DA’s office moved to dismiss all of the charges against Austin in October 2019 after deciding it no longer had “a reasonable likelihood of success at trial,” according to Austin’s defense attorney.

Thirteen years after the fatal shooting of a Centennial man  — and several years after the court sentenced other defendants in the same case — the man prosecutors accuse of pulling the trigger, Terrell Jones, is facing trial.

The case became a long legal saga that has seen five different defendants in court, two grand juries and multiple plea deals.

Andrew Graham, a University of Colorado graduate who had plans for grad school, was found fatally shot about 5:30 a.m. on Nov. 6, 2009, in the front yard of a home in the Willow Creek neighborhood of Centennial near County Line Road and Yosemite Street.

A few hours before Graham, 23, was found — just before midnight — video surveillance captured Graham riding an RTD light rail train and exiting at the station near Park Meadows Shopping Mall in Lone Tree.

Graham had been making living arrangements in Boulder that day and would often walk from the station to his parents’ house in nearby Willow Creek a couple miles away, his mother told Colorado Community Media at the time.

Jones was arrested in March 2020, KCNC-CBS4 reported. Jones was 16 years old at the time of the shooting.

In a case that doesn’t appear to rely on physical evidence, the varying stories of witnesses will take center stage.

Chris Wilcox, a prosecutor with the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, foreshadowed the type of testimony witnesses will likely give.

“There are going to be some people that told one story and told a second story and told a third story,” Wilcox told potential jurors in Arapahoe County District Court on May 5.

Jones’ trial could run for weeks, possibly until June 2, according to the state judicial branch website.

Here’s a look at the details that led up to this point.

Case revolves around group of defendants

A 2016 Arapahoe County grand jury indicted Clarissa Jae Lockhart, Allen Deshawn Ford, Kendall Adam Austin and Joseph Martin — also teenagers at the time of the shooting. The four were arrested in January 2017 in connection with Graham’s death.

Grand juries are sometimes used to decide whether authorities have enough evidence to charge a suspect.

The codefendants described a plot to rob Graham, whom they saw as “a white male who might have money,” according to the affidavit for Jones’ arrest. Jones and three other codefendants are African American. One codefendant, Joseph Martin, was listed as American Indian on the state Department of Corrections website.

Ford, Lockhart and Austin had been linked to a string of race-motivated robberies and assaults in downtown Denver in 2009, according to the affidavit and court proceedings in the Graham case. Suspects in that rash of crimes told police they targeted White males because they assumed they had money and wouldn’t fight back or present a threat.

Lockhart and Austin pleaded guilty to attempted robbery in September 2009 incidents, and Ford pleaded guilty to a bias-motivated crime involving “bodily injury” and pleaded guilty to assault in August 2009 incidents, according to online court records.

Separately, in the case of Graham’s death, Jones was charged with first-degree murder after deliberation and first-degree felony murder, according to court records.

As it relates to this case, a count of first-degree felony murder can be charged against anyone in a group that is allegedly involved in a serious crime in which a death occurs. The charge applies even if a particular member of the group is not believed to have directly caused the death.

Long road to case

Despite the years it took to arrest Jones, his arrest affidavit did not mention any physical evidence that points to any of the defendants. An arrest affidavit is a document that lists the alleged facts surrounding an arrest.

In court in October 2020, Evan Marcia Zuckerman, a defense attorney for Jones, hammered on what she argued are inconsistencies in the accounts of the four codefendants.

Jones — who apparently first spoke to authorities in 2010 — has acknowledged to investigators that he knew the codefendants but has denied involvement in Graham’s death.

He admitted to having a gun around the “2009 time frame,” according to the January 2017 indictment that led to the arrest of the other defendants. He indicated before a grand jury that Ford stole that gun from him at a party, the indictment says.

Wilcox argued in October 2020 that “while the court heard voluminous statements about stories that changed,” Jones still may be found guilty by a jury.

The codefendants “aren’t just witnesses that came forward to make a statement,” Wilcox has said. They are people who “put themselves as being involved in a crime.”