From the
Knoxville News-Sentinel, August 17th, 2009:
Day 1: Carjack/slayings trial ends with grisly testimony
By Jamie Satterfield
Posted August 17, 2009 at 9:44 a.m. , updated August 17, 2009 at 5:23 p.m.
KNOXVILLE - Earlier this afternoon, jurors in the January 2007 slaying of a Knox County couple ended their day with testimony about the grisly discovering of one victim's body that had been burned beyond recognition.
Norfolk Southern engineer J.D. Ford told jurors he saw the body of Christopher Newsom, 23, lying near railroad tracks in the vicinity of the Chipman Street house where Newsom and girlfriend Channon Christian, 21, were taken after they were carjacked and kidnapped.
A photograph displayed movie-sized on a projection screen in Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner's courtroom showed Newsom's body burned from head to toe. His face was unrecognizable.
State arson investigator Robert Watson said an accelerant - likely gasoline - had been poured directly on Newsom's body and ignited.
Authorities say Newsom was raped, bound, gagged and led to the railroad tracks, where he was shot execution-style.
Christian, they say, was kept alive inside the Chipman Street house for several more hours, repeatedly raped and then stuffed inside a trash can. She suffocated to death.
Today marked the first day of trial for suspect Letalvis Cobbins, the first of four defendants to be tried.
Prosecutors Takisha Fitzgerald and Leland Price spent today plotting the movements of the couple in the hours before their abduction and frantic efforts by family and friends to find them after their disappeared from Washington Ridge Apartments off Washington Pike on Jan. 6, 2007.
They made quick work of 11 witnesses, primarily because Cobbins' defense team did little to challenge the testimony. That's because they aren't challenging his involvement, only whether his role merits murder convictions and a death sentence.
Cobbins is a coward and a rapist, but he's no killer, his defense attorney told jurors this morning.
"You're not going to like Letalvis Cobbins," attorney Scott Green said in opening statements. "You shouldn't."
Fitzgerald told jurors Cobbins, 26, brother Lemaricus Davidson, 28, pal George Thomas, 26, and an uncharged fourth suspect, Eric Boyd, 37, carjacked the couple and decided to rape Christian but had to get rid of Newsom, 23, first.
Newsom, she said, was bound, gagged and raped with some sort of object before he was led to his death near railroad tracks behind Davidson's Chipman Street house.
For the next several hours, she said, Christian, 21, was sexually savaged, raped orally, anally and vaginally. Fitzgerald said DNA evidence links Davidson and Cobbins to those rapes.
"Five (DNA) strikes for Davidson, three strikes for Cobbins," she said, referring to semen stains on Christian's clothing and sperm on her body.
But Green countered that Davidson was a violent and manipulative "big brother" who plotted and carried out the crimes with Boyd, who so far has only been convicted in federal court as an accessory.
Green conceded Cobbins forced Christian to perform oral sex but said it was Davidson who ripped her lower body with the savagery of sexual assault.
Earlier today, Cobbins pleaded guilty to facilitation of murder. If Green and co-counsel Kim Parton can convince jurors Cobbins did not plan the crimes or participate in the murders, Cobbins would still go to prison but could escape the death penalty.
Should Cobbins' defenders fail at securing facilitation convictions, they then must mount an effort to save his life in the penalty phase of trial. To do so, they must convince jurors that factors mitigating his responsibility - terrible childhood, undue influence from his brother, psychological issues - outweigh aggravating factors presented by the state. Those aggravating factors include the sheer brutality of the crimes, Cobbins' prior history of carjacking, and failed attempts to rehabilitate him.
Davidson's girlfriend, Vanessa Coleman, 21, also has been charged with first-degree murder and is facing the death penalty.