Rapper YNW Melly's Defense Team Prods Police in Double-Murder Trial UPDATED

Update published 8:20 p.m. 6/13/2023: The mother of rapper Jamell Demons (aka YNW Melly) arrived in  court with a bag full of candy and offered it to people in the courtroom, Law & Crime reported, before the prosecution resumed presenting crime scene evidence on the second day of the trial.

Jurors were shown surveillance footage from the Broward recording studio where Demons, co-defendant Cortlen Henry, and the victims, Anthony Williams and Christopher Thomas Jr., were apparently hanging out before the murders.

The prosecution prepared the victims' mothers before a crime scene investigator showed jurors gruesome photos of the Jeep Compass in which Williams and Thomas were shot. One victim's mother tearfully exited the courtroom ahead of the exhibit, while other family members stayed and fought back tears.

Several of the photos showed the backseat of the vehicle covered with dark blood and shattered glass. Another featured a yellow hoodie with a blood stain on its front side.

In the afternoon, the state called to the stand Tara Carroll, a crime scene investigator with the Miramar Police Department who helped process the Jeep, which Demons and Henry claim was riddled with bullets in a drive-by shooting.

Prosecutors maintain the drive-by story was concocted, and that Demons was the one who pulled the trigger.

Carroll testified about items she found in the car, including gold teeth, a miniature bottle of Sutter Home wine, Magnum condoms, "Jungle Cake" weed, and an LG cell phone.

Seeking to instill doubt about potential cross-contamination, the defense grilled Carroll about how often she changed her gloves between recovery of different items to put into evidence.

Update published 10:10 p.m. 6/12/2023: The defense team sought to poke holes in the capital murder case against rapper Jamell Demons, AKA YNW Melly, by arguing that detectives failed to obtain a search warrant and seek out evidence at a key location tied to the murders.

The defense prodded a now-retired detective on the stand about how Miramar police did not search the home of Cortlen Henry, YNW Melly's alleged accomplice in the murders.

Prosecutors say Henry and Demons concocted a story about a drive-by shooting to cover up that Demons pulled the trigger in the October 2018 murders. Henry drove the two victims to Memorial Hospital Miramar, claiming the victims had been attacked on Miramar Parkway. 

"The gentleman that shows up at the hospital, telling lies with two deceased people in his car... Doesn't occur to you that the place he goes directly next, might be a source for you to find evidence, right?" Demons' attorney David Howard asked on cross-examination.

"We had no evidence that he went to the house," said Hector Bertrand, who worked in the Miramar homicide division for 15 years and handled the YNW Melly case before retiring.

"Where'd he go?" Howard snapped back.

"To the hospital."

"Where'd he go after that?"

"No idea," the detective said.

On redirect, the detective said his team did not have probable cause to believe they would turn up evidence at Henry's home. He indicated the investigation focused largely on the Jeep Compass in which the victims were shot, and the recording studio where Demons and the victims where hanging out before the murders.

The prosecution wrapped up the first day of trial by presenting photos of shell casings and broken glass allegedly from the Jeep Compass — evidence collected from a crime scene on the side of a west Broward County road.

According to detectives, the scene was discovered by a K-9 unit in November 2018 after police keyed in on the area by using cell tracking data from YNW Melly's phone on the morning of the murder. Prosecutors allege that the defendants, who are being prosecuted in separate cases, intentionally concealed the location from detectives.

While prosecutors are trying to portray Demons as a violent member of the G-Shine Bloods gang, the defense claims the state has failed to articulate a motive and produced no direct evidence showing he was the killer.

Update published 11:10 a.m. 6/12/2023: YNW Melly's attorney David Howard focused his opening argument on prosecutors' lack of motive for the murder of fellow rappers Anthony Williams and Christopher Thomas Jr.

Howard said the prosecution has gone to "great lengths" to remind jurors that the state is not required to prove motive.

"But do you know what does require motive? A young man to wake up one day and decide that he's going to kill two of his best friends, best friends that he grew up with, best friends that he hangs out with, best friends who he lives with, best friends whose careers he was trying to launch alongside his own," Howard said.

"After four years of investigation, the state comes and says, 'Hey, he killed two of his best friends.' And you're wondering why, and their answer is, 'Uh, I dunno.' That's the first indication that they're just guessing and don't know what they're talking about," the defense attorney argued.

Prosecutor Kristine Bradley told the jury that the narrative presented by YNW Melly's associate, co-defendant Cortlen Henry — claiming the two victims were killed in a drive-by shooting by a third-party attacker — does not add up.

Bradley said police scrubbed a mile-long stretch of Miramar Parkway, where the drive-by is alleged to have occurred, and found no evidence to corroborate the claims. 

"The detectives from Miramar... shut down the entire length of Miramar Parkway from 160th to 172nd. They walk side-by-side for an hour, that mile-long stretch, looking for evidence of this drive-by... In this case, the lack of evidence is very important. There is a lack of any evidence whatsoever to support that a drive-by happened on Miramar Parkway," Bradley argued, noting officers also searched the area from 172nd to 184th Avenue.

The original story follows below.

The capital murder trial of rapper YNW Melly, accused of killing two members of his rap crew in 2018, is underway in Broward County.

Born Jamell Demons, the Broward hip-hop artist faces two counts of first-degree murder in the October 2018 shooting deaths of aspiring rappers Anthony Williams (YNW Sakchaser) and Christopher Thomas Jr. (YNW Juvy).

Police claim Demons opened fire on Williams and Thomas inside a gray Jeep Compass in Miramar and that an accomplice, Cortlen Henry, then drove the two dying men to the emergency room. Though Demons and Henry claimed the victims were killed in a drive-by shooting, prosecutors say the forensic evidence showed the story was fabricated.

With jury selection for the case wrapped up after a months-long delay, Demons' trial began the morning of June 12 in Broward County court.

Demons, who has collaborated with rappers Kanye West and Kodak Black, is perhaps best known for his breakout hit, "Murder on My Mind," which quickly took on a new significance following the slayings.

Demons turned himself into Miramar police and was arrested on capital murder charges in February 2019. At the time, he dismissed the charges in an Instagram post as "rumors and lies," before emphasizing his love for his two slain friends.

"I want you guys to know I love you and appreciate every single one of y'all. A couple months ago I lost my two brothers by violence and now the system want to find justice... Unfortunately a lot of rumors and lies are being said, but no worries god is with me and my brother @ynw.bortlen, and we want y'all to remember it's a YNW Family. I love you @ynwsakchaser1 and @ynwjuvy #freeus."

Jailed in Broward pending his trial, Demons has remained incarcerated since his arrest despite his attorneys' efforts to get him released at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As previously reported by New Times, the Fourth District Court of Appeal ruled last November that Broward County prosecutors could seek the death penalty in their double-murder case against Demons.

In early June, Broward Circuit Judge John Murphy granted prosecutors' motion to follow a new Florida law under which a recommendation for the death penalty requires only eight votes from the twelve-member jury rather than the unanimous vote previously required. To no avail, Demons had argued that it would be unfair to apply the new law to him in the middle of his case.

Hailing from the Treasure Coast, Demons moved to Broward County to bolster his budding rap career. He joined a growing wave of up-and-coming South Florida SoundCloud rappers, which included Kodak Black and the late XXXTentacion.

Demons spent much of his young life in and out of jail — by 16, he was jailed after allegedly firing a gun near several people outside of Vero Beach High School. He then began releasing rap songs from jail, including "Melly the Menace" and "Slang That Iron."

"Murder on My Mind," a chart-topping song Demons wrote as a teenager after the alleged shooting in Vero Beach, was uploaded on SoundCloud in 2017 and released as a single by the 300 Entertainment record label in June 2018, four months before the Miramar killings.