Teen’s double murder trial starts

 

By PRESTON GILL

Jury selection will resume Wednesday in the trial of Jamichael Lashawn Hudson, 18, accused of participating at the age of 15 in a bloody 2010 double murder on Darce Lane here.

Randy Anthony Joseph, 21, and Hudson were indicted on March 2, 2010, on first-degree murder charges in the Feb. 3, 2010, deaths of Audrey Picard, 75, and Larry Guillory, 49. 

In March 2010, 16th Judicial District Judge James R. McClelland ordered Hudson to be tried as an adult. 

Joseph was sentenced to life without possibility of parole after pleading guilty in January 2012. 

Assistant District Attorney Anthony Saleme is prosecuting the state’s case against Hudson. Most of the jury selection was finished Monday, he said. Drug court is scheduled today so jury selections won’t start again until Wednesday morning, Saleme said. He expects opening arguments to begin Wednesday afternoon with the trial likely lasting the remainder of the week. 

The state is barred from seeking the death penalty for Hudson because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that defendants who commit a crime before the age of 18 cannot be executed.

Joseph pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder. A mental assessment before his plea said he had a full scale IQ of 69, functioning with mild retardation. In 2002 the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the death penalty for persons with mental retardation.

McClelland gave Joseph two life sentences without benefit of parole, probation or suspension of sentence.

Franklin police were called to the Darce Lane residence when a meal provider service reported no answer at the Darce Street residence on the morning of Feb. 4, according to the statement of facts presented by Assistant District Attorney Vincent Borne before Joseph’s plea.

Affidavits from Franklin police accuse the pair of breaking into the residence where Guillory, Joseph’s uncle, lived with Picard in a robbery attempt.

Franklin police said Joseph admitted being at the robbery but said it was Hudson who struck both victims multiple times with a long blunt object after which Joseph located Picard’s cigarette wallet with about $300 on the couch.

Borne’s statement of facts, which Joseph agreed was substantially correct, said the pair split the money; with Hudson taking $200 and Joseph $100. 

Borne said both men were placed at the scene of the murders through Joseph’s statements to police as well as DNA evidence.

Borne said police got a break in the case when, a little more than three weeks after the murders, shorts were found in a garbage can about 100 feet from Joseph’s house that had his DNA as well as Picard’s blood on them.

Borne said some of the DNA collected at the murder scene from Guillory’s pulled-out-pockets belonged to Hudson.