Execution or self defense It's up to the jury now

Source: The Philadelphia InquirerNov.文件倉 07--A Philadelphia Common Pleas Court jury has begun deliberations in the trial of Omar Sharif Cash, charged in the 2008 execution-style slaying of a 19-year-old man outside a Frankford car wash.The jury of 10 women and two men went out to begin their review of the evidence against Cash, 31, shortly after noon on Thursday after a morning of closing arguments and instructions in the law from Judge Sandy V.L. Byrd.On Wednesday, Cash testified in his defense and admitted that on April 21, 2008, he shot Muliek Ronald Brown in the back of the head as Brown polished the wheelrims of his Mercury Marquis outside Winning Edge Car Wash on Frankford Avenue.Cash, however, maintained he shot Brown because it was a case of "kill or be killed." Cash said Brown and other members of a local gang had shot at and were hunting him."I was trying to avoid getting killed myself, this was how I'm going to protect myself," Cash said, adding, "I didn't want to have to keep ducking and hiding from these people."Assistant District Attorneys Carlos Vega and Peter Lim have called Cash's version of events an "excuse" -- an attempt to give the jury a reason not to find him guilty of first-degree murder. If the jury finds Cash guilty of first-degree murder it would then decide whether to sentence him to death by lethal injection or life in prison without parole.Prosecutors said Brown had no juvenile or adult criminal history, was unarmed, worked full-time in a drugstore and was married and the father of a young son."This was not just a murder, this was an execution," Lim told the jury in his closing argument.Lim argued that the fact that Cash sneaked up behind Brown and shot him in the head and then fled to New York City proved he was guilty of a premeditated malicious killing."His intent was not just beyond a reasonable doubt, it was beyond all 存倉oubt," Lim said.Defense attorney Lee Mandell argued that the eyewitness identifications and forensic evidence might have provided a basis for a defense had not Cash testified."None of this matters now because Omar Cash admitted he shot Muliek Brown," Mandell told the jury.Instead, Mandell argued that the killing was a result of the "code of the streets" in a poor, crime-plagued neighborhood of the city."To decide this case you have to get inside the head and mind of Omar Cash," Mandell added. "Think hard and then you have to decide what kind of responsibility he must bear for what he did."Cash has become almost legendary in law enforcement for escaping conviction. A 2009 Inquirer series detailed how a rape case was dismissed when the victim failed to appear at trial. An attempted-murder case failed when the victim hanged himself. A robbery case sank when the alleged victim, wanted on a drug charge, became a fugitive.Cash's streak ran out in 2010 when a Bucks County jury found him guilty of first-degree murder in the May 2008 kidnapping and killing of an immigrant carpenter -- shot and dumped along a Bensalem highway -- and the repeated rape of the victim's 41-year-old female companion, who later escaped from a Lawrenceville, N.J., motel.The Bucks jury spared his life and Cash was sentenced to life without parole for murder.Cash testified in his defense in that trial too. He denied killing the man and said the woman was a prostitute he met at the motel through an acquaintance who was a pimp.The latest jury did not hear about the earlier cases but could during the death penalty phase if the panel convicts him of first-degree murder.jslobodzian@phillynews.com215-854-2985 @joeslobo.inquirer.com/crimeandpunishmentCopyright: ___ (c)2013 The Philadelphia Inquirer Visit The Philadelphia Inquirer at .philly.com Distributed by MCT Information Services儲存