SODDI: Demeatrius Montgomery Style
It’s a classic criminal defense attorney strategy, typically employed when the evidence of a case is stacked against your client and particularly potent if even a smattering of that evidence carries the slightest taint.
Hence we have accused cop killer Demeatrius Montgomery playing the SODDI card: Some Other Dude Did It. In this case, one Ocatvious Elmore, who Montgomery’s defense team is attempting to argue a jailhouse snitch had fingered as the scumbag actually responsible for killing CMPD officers Jeff Shelton and Sean Clark.
Elmore, who bears a disturbing resemblance to Montgomery, has a rich criminal history that includes convictions and arrests for breaking and entering, assault with a deadly weapon, and robbery, the last of which he is currently in prison for.
Superior Court Judge Forrest Bridges has yet to rule if a jury will even get a chance to hear about Elmore and his possible connection to the crime, but the SODDI seeds of doubt have already been planted and fertilized by the actions of CMPD Det. Arvin Fant.
Defense attorneys claim that a jailhouse snitch told Fant that he had seen Elmore near the site of the 2007 slayings and that Elmore had subsequently confessed to the crime. Further muddying the waters, defense attorneys are arguing that notes Fant had taken during the investigation and has admitted to either destroying or otherwise compromising, might have contained exculpatory evidence that centered on Elmore’s possible involvement in the killings.
That doesn’t make the prosecution’s task of nailing Montgomery any easier, but it doesn’t necessarily damage it beyond repair, even if a jury gets a full dose of the SODDI defense.
Assistant District Attorney Marsha Goodenow contends police dutifully followed up on the Elmore angle, despite Fant’s inexcusable documentation of such, and found no merit, while overwhelming evidence, including Montgomery’s DNA on the murder weapon, pointed to him as the culprit.
And let’s not forget Montgomery’s own criminal record. This from a 2007 Rhino Times article:
Montgomery has a string of arrests dating back to at least 1998, when at the age of 16 – before he dropped out of South Mecklenburg High School – he was charged with larceny and resisting a police officer. He has been convicted three times for assault – once on a female and twice on a police officer – according to court records. Despite his criminal history, Montgomery has never served a day in an N.C. prison, and only a few months in the Mecklenburg County jail.
In 2004, Montgomery pleaded guilty to an assault on a public officer charge, the result of a confrontation with police after he was stopped for speeding. He was sentenced to 45 days in jail.
For an August 2004 assault on a female conviction, Montgomery received a suspended sentence and was given community service and 18 months probation, which he violated the following February and spent almost three months in jail as a result. In January 2006, he was arrested for resisting a police officer and an open container violation. He served two days in jail.
And now we are left with this, as jury selection begins in the trial of Demeatrius Montgomery: what should have been a slam-dunk case for the prosecution of a career criminal accused of killing two police officers, but has instead suddenly spiraled into something entirely different and altogether uncertain.
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