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In her closing statement, Assistant State’s Attorney Donna Pettersen reminded the court that Townsend was just 18 when he was shot and killed. She walked the jury through all of the evidence presented over the course of the week, reminding them how “complete strangers” came to his aid after he was shot seven times and dragged out of the car before first responders ultimately declared him dead at 8:37 p.m. Although a motive for Townsend’s death was never confirmed, Pettersen posited the two men may have been arguing, perhaps over money Townsend had made from drug deals he allegedly made that day.

In deciding their verdict, Pettersen asked the jury to “look closely” at the elements of first-degree murder when considering how to find him: Williams’ actions that night, Pettersen said, meet the standard of “willful, deliberate and premeditated.”

“When you shoot someone that many times, you intend to kill,” Pettersen said. “With each pull of the trigger,” she said, Williams “could have walked away, but he didn’t. Hold him accountable by finding him guilty.”

Straight away, public defender Michael Beach said “Nick didn’t do it. That makes no sense.” There was “zero evidence” that Townsend’s body was dragged from the car, Beach said, saying that was something the state “made up, whole cloth.” Townsend was “shot outside the car, and not by Nicholas Williams.” The state presented new and untested theories out of nowhere, he told the court.

Murder is a “senseless” crime every time, Beach said, “but the investigations are supposed to make sense.” By now, Beach told the jury, they probably have several unanswered questions, “each one a reasonable doubt,” adding that “maybe, probably, almost certainly … all of those mean acquit.”

Williams is not responsible for Townsend’s death, Beach said: Rather, his real killer remains unidentified and on the loose. When Williams fled the scene that night, Beach said, he had “acted out of fear of being the next victim.” His client also had “the fear of being falsely accused” of his friend’s death, Beach said, and in this instance that particular fear has come true.

“In their world, do you think he could just go back and say ‘I was there, but I didn’t help’? That’s not how their world works,” Beach said. It was fear of the consequences of even being there that left Williams “stressed out, anxious, hunkered down at home and scared to death” before his arrest. A witness in the case, Beach reminded the jury, initially told police he thought “maybe Nick saw something he didn’t want to see.”

The state’s case, Beach said, asks the jury to assume a lot and is built on “hare-brained theories” developed by the Charles County Sheriff’s Office detectives who investigated the case. Physical evidence went unchecked and leads were not pursued, Beach said, and the jury should not ignore holes in their argument.

“Do not give your blessing to this inadequate investigation,” Beach concluded.

Assistant State’s Attorney John Stackhouse rebutted Beach’s arguments emphatically. The state does not deal in theories but in facts and evidence, he told the jury, and the evidence in this case has been consistent with Williams being Townsend’s murderer all along. What the state says, Stackhouse told the court at several junctures throughout his rebuttal, isn’t what matters: What is important, and what they need to focus on, is the evidence.

Stackhouse urged the jury members to employ their common sense in deciding a verdict. Williams had lied about dropping Townsend off at a liquor store that night, Stackhouse said, both to mutual friends of theirs and Townsend’s family. His conversations that day were odd, to say the least, Stackhouse said.

The second half of the trial, which began Wednesday afternoon, was to determine whether or not he was criminally responsible for the stabbing death. Hemsley’s defense attorney, Greenbelt-based David M. Simpson, contended that his client, a schizophrenic, had been in the middle of an acute episode of his mental illness. In the second half of the trial, the defense bore the burden of proof.

When the second half of the trial began Wednesday afternoon, Simpson told the jury it was “the real issue why we impaneled you, folks.” Although a plea of not criminally responsible may seem like a way of trying to avoid liability for one’s actions, he said, that is very much not the case. Hemsley’s mental illness is “not something he developed that night,” Simpson said, his illness “manifested in the worst possible way.”

When one enters a not criminally responsible plea, Simpson said, that person is automatically directed to the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center in Jessup for a psychiatric evaluation. Neither the defense nor the state pays the doctors, he explained, so the evaluation is “impartial.” Hemsley had been sent to the hospital after being found incompetent to stand trial previously, and Simpson noted it was “a considerable amount of time” before he was deemed competent. Those doctors, Simpson said, also were of the professional opinion Hemsley was not criminally responsible for Yates’ death.

At the height of his client’s illness, Simpson said, he thought he was “equal with God,” and the court would hear that he was wracked with hallucinations of people trying to poison him with ricin and people following him. While there was no question of Hemsley’s mental illness, Assistant State’s Attorney Sarah Freeman said, “a history of mental illness, by law, is not enough to find someone not criminally responsible.”

Schizophrenia, Freeman said, has dormant and active phases, and it is only when the illness is in an active phase that one loses rationality. In Hemsley’s case, she told the jury, one shouldn’t look just at his mental illness but at his behavior leading up to, during and after the incident.

When Hemsley bought the truck the day before murdering Yates, Freeman said, that was evidence that he was not in an active phase of the illness, explaining that one experiencing an episode of that nature would be incapable of executing something so goal-oriented. After his arrest, Freeman told the jury, he was “not talking gibberish or nonsensical,” and was non-compliant but largely quiet and calm. Ultimately, Freeman said, Hemsley is criminally responsible for the “savage” murder.

In the second half of the trial, the jury heard from family members present that night, officers involved in Hemsley’s case and two expert witnesses proffered by the defense and the state both, psychiatrists who had evaluated Hemsley.

Det. John Elliott of the Charles County Sheriff’s Office told the court that when Hemsley was told he was being charged with first-degree murder, his response was “We’ll see about that.” He seemed to appreciate the nature of the charges, Elliott said, and declined to speak further.

One of the witnesses that night, Yates’ wife, told the court she couldn’t recall seeing Hemsley behave the way he did that night prior to it, but she was aware his wife and daughter had left their shared home in fear of violence from him.

Another relative of Hemsley’s recalled “a few occasions” on which he confided that he feared he was being followed. The night of the murder, his relative said, Hemsley came to his home unannounced before he ultimately went to the Yates home. He was “fine and cordial,” the man said, “until he just started busting out laughing” at nothing immediately apparent.

Hemsley’s wife testified that he had been hospitalized for his mental illness before, and while medication seemed to keep his symptoms under control he ultimately stopped using them around late 2014 or early 2015.

The Maryland Independent first reported on Hemsley’s arrest in April 2016, when he was allegedly caught trying to flee the scene of the crime with his father-in-law’s blood still on his hands. Hemsley had been separated from his wife for six months on April 23, 2016, when he allegedly entered the home of her father, 71-year-old John Edward Yates. Hemsley confronted the man in the basement, where his 12-year-old daughter allegedly witnessed her father stabbing her grandfather to death.

In August 2016, the Maryland Independent reported, Hemsley was found incompetent to stand trial due to a mental disorder. At a status hearing at the time, Hemsley “immediately became belligerent as proceedings began” and was escorted out of the courtroom shortly thereafter.

During Monday’s proceedings, Hemsley was calm throughout. In giving the state’s opening argument, Deputy State’s Attorney Karen Piper Mitchell opened by musing on the criteria used to evaluate what rating a film gets and how children factor in to those decisions. What the children at the home saw that night, Piper Mitchell said, far exceeded a horror movie.

“The horrific scene you’re going to see, these children weren’t protected from it,” Piper Mitchell said. As she walked the court through the events of that night, Piper Mitchell said Yates was seated in his favorite spot downstairs, watching a baseball game on television. All was as it should be, she told the court, until it wasn’t.

“Hemsley killed Mr. Yates. I represent him on that fact. There’s no dispute in this case,” began defense attorney David M. Simpson. When considering the events of that night, Simpson told the jury, “it gets complicated as we go along.” Simpson said his client allegedly killed Yates amidst a “strange set of circumstances,” a pattern of increasingly bizarre behavior that dated back to 2015 and was also the reason for Hemsley’s wife and daughter leaving home. Even his behavior prior to Yates’ death the night of the crime, Simpson said, was off.

Wade’s sentencing Tuesday came about after having been previously postponed several times, beginning in July 2018, which defense attorney Joseph McKenzie noted in court.

The most recent postponement came in January, according to online court records.

It was even delayed several times Tuesday morning: Originally on the docket for 9 a.m., Wade’s case was not heard until around 2 p.m. because of other cases scheduled in the courtroom that day, including jury selection for a trial.

When all parties were assembled before West and the proceedings were underway, Assistant State’s Attorney Tiffany Campbell opted to keep her remarks brief, saying the court had heard the state’s position at length in previous proceedings.

“It’s clear the defendant has a substance abuse problem,” Campbell said, “but it’s also clear that he poses a danger to society.”

McKenzie, who noted Wade’s display of “abnormal behavior” since he was 14 years old, said his 2015 guilty plea to theft and subsequent unsupervised probation “was one of the worst things that could have happened to my client.” That period of time, he said, saw the worsening of substance abuse and mental disorders that was not disclosed in those proceedings. McKenzie said he was not Wade’s lawyer in that first case, and the first attorney “failed to communicate” with his family entirely. Thus, he said, Wade “fell through the cracks.”

“I’m begging you to rewind and assess the sentence given in 2015,” McKenzie said, noting that the court has more awareness now of Wade’s issues than they did previously.

He recalled a previous court proceeding in which, he said, Wade became agitated to the point of being almost impossible to calm down. His nurse, McKenzie reminded the court, calmed the man down by offering him a coloring book and crayons, which served to soothe him.

Last October, Afroilan and Davis, their spouses and Davis’ daughter were charged with allegedly stealing over $100,000 from the South Hampton HOA over the course of at least five years

Charles County Circuit Court Associate Judge Donine Carrington Martin agreed to defer Afroilan’s sentencing until Nov. 1 pending the creation of a mutually satisfactory restitution plan with the HOA.

According to the plea agreement, the state will also not proceed to trial against Afroilan’s wife Elsa, which was scheduled for next month, provided that Afroilan makes “substantial progress toward his restitution obligation.”

Davis entered into a similar agreement in April to defer the trials scheduled for his wife Linda and daughter Uniqueka Davis-McKinney.

The Charles County Sheriff’s Office filed charges against the five following a 14-month investigation by CCSO’s financial crimes division that involved tracing payments to and from multiple accounts in least three banks and the seizure of documents from the Davis and Afroilan residences.