Homicide Watch D.C.

More than three dozen trials for murder cases have already been penciled into the 2013 judicial calendar.

Of murders that have occurred since August 2010, 39 cases are scheduled for 2013 trials. Of course, not all will ultimately be tried. Some defendants will plead guilty. Others may have the charges against them dropped. In other cases, delays could push the trials later into the year, or into 2014.

Explore the 2013 murder trial calendar below. Note that the ages of the defendants are the age at which the person was arrested and not necessarily their current age.

Note: If the timeline is loading slow, view it on Dippity, here.

“What you know about this
… what you know about that?
You ain’t never seen a nigger get whacked.”

The words were assumed to be style, the rap of an 18-year-old from Southeast D.C. Talent and posture. But hours after performing the song, the writer, Navarro Anthony Brown, was dead.

Known by friends as “Moochie,” he was shot near his home in Anacostia on Jan. 10, 2012. Friends said he’d just left the recording studio with a girl he was interested in. An exhibit on Southeast D.C. life he’d been working on was due to debut at the Hirshhorn ArtLab Noise Factory.

“When they’re rapping, it’s really uncertain to tell when it goes from being real to stylizing,” Kate Clark, a visiting artist and mentor, said in an interview nearly a year after Brown’s performance.

“I assumed it was more style than document. But Moochie’s death made it all the more real.”
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DC saw six confirmed domestic violence homicides this year, victim advocates say.

That’s down from 13 in 2011 and 12 in 2010. But the end of the year left some aid workers concerned.

Amy Loudermilk, who was a senior policy specialist at the DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence before taking a position as deputy director of the DC Mayor’s Office of GLBT Affairs in November, says she was troubled by a recent violent burst in domestic crime.

It’s more common in DC for domestic violence homicides to come through “close range stuff” like stabbing, slapping or blunt force trauma, Loudermilk said. But two fatal domestic violence shootings, one in the doorway of a Metro bus, within a week of each other in December broke the pattern.
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Over eight days in spring 2010, five people under the age of 20 were shot and killed. This spring, the five men accused in those shootings were found guilty, four of them of first-degree murder and one of second-degree murder. A sixth pleaded guilty to five counts of murder and two counts of conspiracy, becoming a key witness for the prosecution.

In this feature curration, Homicide Watch looks back on the road to conviction in the South Capitol Street Massacre.
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Police are asking for the public’s help identifying two men seen in the video above. MPD says they are “persons of interest” in the Christmas Eve shooting death of Jason Anthony Emma near Capitol Hill.

Emma was found seated in his car, suffering from gunshot wounds, in the 1200 block of C Street Northeast at 2:15 a.m. on Dec. 24. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Read more

Each Friday, Homicide Watch brings you a list of upcoming hearings in the cases we follow. All hearings are scheduled for 9:30 a.m. unless otherwise noted. To add an item to the listing, email homicidewatchdc [at] gmail.com. To see scheduled court hearings beyond next week, see our calendar.
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In September, police say, 21-year-old Joel Johnson went into an apartment in the 200 block of First Street Southeast intending to rob the person who lived there. It was an attempted crime that ultimatly cost Johnson his life.

MPD says that a man inside the apartment struggled with either Johnson or his alleged accomplice, Jaren Holley. A gun was fired during that struggle, and Johnson was struck. He was declared dead at the scene and two months later MPD closed the case, saying Johnson’s death was justified; the shooter had been acting in self-defense.

Johnson is one of six people this year whose deaths in D.C. have been ruled justified homicide by citizen, more commonly known as self-defense. Four of those deaths occurred in 2012; a further two were cold cases closed by self-defense this year.

The reasons given for self-defense are varied: in two cases, including Johnson’s, police determined that the homicide victim had been attempting a robbery. Another case was ruled self-defense when the reason for the shooting turned out to be a neighborhood feud. Another was described as an “argument,” and the reason for self-defense in the two remaining cases is officially listed as “unknown.”
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2012 marked the ninth full year I have been documenting the building of street memorials for victims of violence in the DC area. It was a year of sadness, and some hope.

As of this writing, an additional eighty citizens of our community lost their lives due to murder this year. This number is not just a dry statistic for the families of the slain. It is a very personal rending of the fabric of trust and connection. Each violent death sends out waves of terrible, soul-wrenching grief that forever alters the lives of those in the victim’s circle- mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, grandparents, friends, loved ones, neighbors. And the families of the murderers are also often shattered by the violence – wracked with their own losses of trust, love, and understanding, of shame, denial, and conflicted experiences. I believe that violence just begets violence. Our community as a whole has suffered so many deaths over the years that there is a form of collective post-traumatic stress syndrome operating in many homes and hearts.
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The District of Columbia will see less than 100 murders this year, something that hasn’t happened in a half-century. On Dec. 17, police chief Cathy Lanier sat down with Homicide Watch D.C. reporters Penny Ray and Sam Pearson. Looking at the numbers, she said:

When I think about the number from where I started from in 1990 when we had 479, it seems dramatic. I’ve said since ‘07 our tipping point is less than 100 and we can do it. But I still think about 82 families who have lost somebody. So it’s certainly not, it’s not victory. But it feels like a good milestone for us. I think we passed the tipping point.

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Family, friends and neighborhoods of homicide victims and suspects opened up their hearts and minds on Homicide Watch throughout the year. In their comments were words of grief, wisdom, loss and comfort. They helped all of us better understand the true human impact of violent crime and the humanity present in the most tragic of circumstances.

As 2012 closes we look back on some of the comments of the year.
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