3 men found guilty of gunning down rapper XXXTentacion five years ago. Now what?

2023-03-23 15:03:07 By : Ms. Natalie Yang

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After a five-year hunt for justice, the court declared Michael Boatwright, Dedrick Williams and Trayvon Newsome responsible for gunning down South Florida rapper XXXTentacion during a 2018 heist.

READ MORE: Five years after XXXTentacion’s murder, three men found guilty in a month-long trial

The jury’s decision on Monday came after days of deliberations, weeks of testimony, and years of investigation. Here’s a look back at the case — from the beginning — as thousands who are following the trial await the final step: sentencing.

XXXTentacion, whose real name was Jahseh Onfroy, was fatally shot on June 18, 2018, as he was leaving the RIVA Motorsports dealership in Deerfield Beach.

A dark SUV blocked his BMW, and two gunmen hopped out — robbing the rapper and firing a spray of bullets. XXXTentacion was 20 years old when he was killed.

The focus of the robbery was a Louis Vuitton bag with $50,000 inside. The artist had withdrawn the sum from his account at a Bank of America branch in stacks of $100 bills hours before, unaware he was being followed.

Video surveillance, which was later played in court, shows two men jumping out of the 2017 Dodge Journey’s passenger-side doors. The attackers leaned into rapper’s window and demanded the diamond chain that he was wearing. He didn’t comply, so they shot him — and ran off with the LV bag.

READ MORE: Minute by minute, how cops tracked the four suspects in rapper XXXTentacion’s murder

Before the robbery, Williams, wearing a white tank top and orange sandals, exited the SUV’s driver’s seat while Robert Allen got out via the rear driver’s-side door. The pair went into Riva Motorsports, where Williams bought a black neoprene mask. Williams was recognized by Riva staff as a previous customer, likely helped by his heavily tatted face.

Williams and Allen then went back out to the SUV.

Williams’ orange slides proved to be pivotal in the case, with detectives tracking him down through Instagram and Facebook posts in which he sported the bright sandals.

Through phone pings and surveillance videos, police identified the two gunmen as Boatwright, 27, and Newsome, 24. They identified Williams, 26, as the getaway driver.

Allen, the fourth suspect, was also arrested in 2018, but he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and armed robbery with a firearm in August.

In the trial, which took more than a month, the prosecution centered its case on surveillance videos and phone records placing Boatwright, Williams and Newsome at the scene. Prosecutors also emphasized the flashy social media posts that helped bring the trio to detectives’ attention.

Prosecutor Pascale Achille broke down the evidence and testimony the state presented, using maps, videos of the defendants dancing with money and even eight minutes of silence to show jurors how the crime was planned and executed. She also paraded the orange sandals that led detectives to Williams as well as a camouflage hat that led them to Boatwright and boxes of bullets that matched the ones used to gun down XXXTentacion.

Allen, 26, was the prosecution’s key witness, testifying against his co-defendants in the case. Achille urged the jurors to consider Allen’s testimony despite his checkered past.

“Plans that are hatched in hell do not have angels for witnesses,” she told jurors.

Defense attorneys all shaded Allen’s testimony, although each opted for a different strategy. Boatwright’s lawyer Joseph Kimok claimed that his client posted photos with stolen money but didn’t pull the trigger. Newsome’s attorney George Reres insisted that his client wasn’t at the crime scene. But Williams’ attorney Mauricio Padilla proposed the most elaborate theory: Broward detectives failed to investigate one of the biggest names in hip-hop — Drake.

The internet buzzed with unsubstantiated conspiracies linking Drake to XXXTentacion’s slaying due to social media beef between the internationally acclaimed artist and the South Florida rapper. As it stands, no evidence has connected Drake to the murder other than him being added to the witness list in December, as first reported by the Miami Herald.

Padilla repeatedly attempted to get Drake to sit through a deposition in the case, an order that Judge Michael Usan threw out after the rapper’s lawyers argued his appearance would add “more layers of celebrity and notoriety to a tragic and unfortunate event.” Before closing arguments, Padilla filed a motion to recuse Usan and declare a mistrial, citing his inability to make his case without Drake’s testimony.

Aside from lambasting the state’s evidence, Padilla criticized Broward detectives’ investigation, alleging that they didn’t explore theories that conflicted with their narrative. He mentioned how Drake had been named in tips about the case provided to authorities but hadn’t been properly looked into.

“It highlights tunnel vision [by the police],” he said. “It really affected the investigation of this case.”

The main evidence against Newsome, Reres said, was Allen’s testimony. Reres claimed that Allen “changed his testimony to fit what the state wanted him to say” to reduce his time behind bars.

“All the physical evidence points against what Robert Allen said about Trayvon Newsome,” Reres said. “[The state] had nothing against Trayvon Newsome without it.”

Kimok said that unknown foreign DNA was found under XXXTentacion’s fingernails. But neither the rapper’s jean jacket or BMW was swabbed for DNA, he said.

“Someone else left that DNA underneath Jahseh Onfroy’s fingernails,” Kimok said. “Someone else’s DNA is on his neck. Someone else’s DNA is on the necklace.”

Though much is unknown about how deliberations went, the 12 jurors asked to review surveillance footage and revisit text messages from the day of the murder.

On day eight, they pressed the buzzer twice and sealed the fates of Boatwright, Williams and Newsome. The three were convicted of first-degree murder and robbery with a deadly weapon.

As verdicts were read, Boatwright turned to the cameras and the rapper’s family. He then blew a kiss and smirked.

XXXTentacion’s mother, Cleopatra Bernard, strolled out of the courtroom Monday, sandwiched in a crowd of family members. She thanked her son’s fans and the thousands of people following the case.

“Justice was done,” Bernard said.

Defense lawyers haven’t indicated whether they plan to appeal, but the trio will be sentenced by Judge Usan on April 6. They face a mandatory sentence of life behind bars without parole, as Florida abolished parole in the ‘90s, a prosecutor told the Miami Herald Monday.

Allen, who testified against his co-defendants, will be sentenced the week after, on April 12.