Terrell Jones found not guilty of 2009 murder of Centennial man, Andrew Graham

Prosecution focused on other suspects’ statements; defense pointed to lack of physical evidence

Ellis Arnold
earnold@coloradocommunitymedia.com
Posted 6/6/23

A jury has found Terrell Jones not guilty in the shooting death of a  Centennial man more than 13 years ago.

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Terrell Jones found not guilty of 2009 murder of Centennial man, Andrew Graham

Prosecution focused on other suspects’ statements; defense pointed to lack of physical evidence

Posted

A jury has found Terrell Jones not guilty in the shooting death of a Centennial man more than 13 years ago.

Jones was charged with first-degree murder after deliberation and first-degree felony murder.

Among those who appeared to attend court in support of him, crying broke out in the courtroom gallery behind Jones, who was visibly emotional with his defense attorneys after the judge read the verdict on June 6.

Jones was accused of killing Andrew Graham, a 23-year-old University of Colorado graduate who had plans for grad school. Graham 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.

In a case that did not rely on physical evidence, the varying stories of people called as witnesses — those who allegedly participated in the robbery that ended in Graham’s death — took center stage.

Defense attorneys for Jones argued that shifting stories among the other alleged participants amounted to a shaky case.

“You want to convict this guy, for him to lose his liberty, over that kind of changing statements?” Evan Zuckerman, a defense attorney for Jones, asked the jury at the end of the trial arguments, before the verdict arrived.

She told the members of the jury that they only need a small amount of doubt to find Jones not guilty.

And “you have a bucket that’s overflowing with reasonable doubt,” Zuckerman said.

On the other side, Chris Wilcox, the prosecutor in the case, emphasized that believing someone is guilty beyond reasonable doubt does not require “absolute certainty.”

The jury can consider what the people who were called as witnesses said in previous statements to law enforcement over the years. Some of those are consistent and some of those are inconsistent with what the jury heard in court, Wilcox said at the end of the trial arguments.

But “all of these individuals point to the guilt of Terrell Jones,” Wilcox said.

Jones’ trial started in early May, and witness testimony and arguments ran through June 2.

Here’s a look at some key moments from the last week of the trial.

Theory of moving from Denver

In the case of Graham’s death, Jones was charged with first-degree murder after deliberation and first-degree felony murder. Jones was 16 years old at the time of the shooting.

Graham’s death took place in the context of an outbreak of robberies and assaults in the downtown Denver area in 2009.

A 2016 Arapahoe County grand jury indicted Clarissa Lockhart, Allen Ford, Kendall Austin and Joseph Martin — teenagers at the time of Graham’s 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 defendants are African American. One defendant, Martin, was listed as American Indian on the state Department of Corrections website.

Ford, Lockhart and Austin had been linked to the 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.

Prosecution 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.

(Jones was not charged as a suspect in any of the assaults or robberies in the Denver crime outbreak, according to the court proceedings in the case of Graham’s death.)

Law enforcement argues that a group allegedly came to Centennial — near the Park Meadows mall — to evade scrutiny amid an increased police presence in the downtown Denver area.

Defense attorneys brought up phone records that they said were connected to the alleged participants in the case, but Wilcox responded: “The phone records in this case tell us what the phone did, not who the phone was talking to, not who was on the other end of the phone.”

He argued that “these are phones that were not involved in this case.”

Wilcox argued that other defendants at times didn’t admit involvement in the crime scene that led to Graham’s death because of fear of reprisal.

The prosecution had played a clip where Ford had said: “They said you tell anybody, man, we’ll kill you, man … I don’t want to be killed, man.”

‘Jones is excluded’

Zuckerman, one of the defense attorneys, argued that the physical evidence “exonerates Terrell Jones.”

“They did a lot of swabbing on (Graham’s) briefcase for fingerprints. No Terrell Jones fingerprints. No Joseph Martin, no Allen Ford, no Clarissa Lockhart,” Zuckerman said earlier in the trial.

Zuckerman emphasized the lack of what she called “gold standard” evidence, DNA.

“The findings of that DNA analysis on that satchel? Excluded, Terrell Jones is excluded. You know who else is excluded? Joseph Martin, Allen Ford, Clarissa Lockhart, Mr. Graham’s parents, the people who he had dinner with that night,” Zuckerman said.

No gun was ever found, and no bullets were ever found, Zuckerman said.

Authorities found “no light rail or mall video surveillance of Terrell Jones,” according to the defense’s closing presentation.

(Law enforcement officials believe Graham was followed from the nearby light rail station next to Park Meadows mall.)

The prosecution “just kind of leaped over” Martin’s contradictory statements, Zuckerman argued.

She pointed to when the suspects “denied involvement, when they cried, when they sobbed, when they begged ‘listen to me’” but authorities felt they were not telling the truth.

She underlined when police pressured Martin regarding the possibility of “going to prison and losing his son.”

She played a clip of an investigator, apparently talking to Martin, saying: “I don’t give a s--- about the theft, the robbery … my job is to find out who killed a man.”

He added: “Tell me about that night … because you do have a 2-year-old that you love that needs you … I don’t give a s--- about the stories you told in the past … Think about your little man.”

He continued: “We’re here to get you through this and help you … We’re going to try and help you, man. I’m not bulls----ing you.”

Law enforcement still ended up arresting Martin although he spoke to authorities many times.

‘Does not implicate’

Wilcox told the jury that DNA can be “masked,” noting that Graham’s bag was “left in the elements for several hours” and was found in the neighborhood by an area man.

“The physical evidence does not implicate Terrell Jones. It does not have his DNA or his fingerprints,” but it doesn’t exonerate him, Wilcox argued.

Zuckerman argued the evidence also doesn’t implicate others in the group of alleged participants.

“16-year-old Terrell Jones did not commit a murder. You don’t even have evidence that the other (allegedly involved) people did,” Zuckerman said.

Youth and confessions

The defense brought Hayley Cleary, a professor of criminal justice and public policy at Virginia Commonwealth University who has a Ph.D in developmental psychology, to speak about young people and confessing in interrogations.

“If I had to put numbers (to it), from the age of 10 to 25 is how we define adolescent development, so that’s very, very different from the legal system’s (view), which is an arbitrary bright line at 18,” Cleary said.

Young people are “much more vulnerable to police manipulation and coercion because of their developmental status,” Cleary added.

“Developmental research is clear, interrogation research is clear,” Cleary said, noting that young people have “poor impulse control” and noting “their preference for immediate rewards over long-term rewards.”

“Youth make terrible decisions under stress,” she added.

She spoke of “reward sensitivity” — the concept that the adolescent brain, “by virtue of its physical features,” is primed to be sensitive to things that feel good.

“That reward sensitivity is really, really problematic in the interrogation room because the reward from a stressful situation is (allowing yourself to exit) that stressful situation … Even at the potential cost of legal consequences down the road,” Cleary said.

Cleary noted, though, that it’s not her role to say whether the confessions in this case were true or false.

(Jones contends he was not involved in nor present at the shooting of Graham, the judge noted to the jury.)

At the time of the incident, Martin was 17, and Lockhart and Ford were 18 years old, according to Zuckerman.

Wilcox argued that young people can still confess truthfully even under pressure.

“Even if every (risk factor) is present — not just young people, not just adolescents … with minimization, with maximization, with threats, with promises … every one of those can be present” and a confession can still be true, Wilcox said.

The third week of the trial and earlier details, including outcomes for defendants other than Jones, are covered in Colorado Community Media’s previous stories. See tinyurl.com/TrialWeek3, tinyurl.com/TrialWeek2 and tinyurl.com/TrialWeek1.

shooting, Centennial Colorado, Terrell Jones, trial, Arapahoe County court, Andrew Graham

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