DETROIT (WWJ) — A jury on Thursday convicted 25-year-old Jaylin Brazier of second-degree murder and tampering with evidence in the death of his stepcousin, Zion Foster, in 2022.
Even though Foster’s body has never been found, WWJ Legal Analyst Charlie Langton says he was “not surprised at all by this verdict.”
“The jury was only out an hour and I thought that was too long,” he said live on WWJ Thursday afternoon.
Langton cited an “overwhelming” amount of circumstantial evidence, including phone records that traced Brazier to the dumpster that he admitted to dumping the then-17-year-old’s body in. Langton says Google searches also showed disturbing queries including about having sex with a cousin and how trash is disposed of in a dumpster.
On top of that all, Langton says an interview Brazier gave to authorities in which he admitted that Foster was dead — not long after first lying to police and saying that he hadn’t seen her and didn’t know where she was shortly after she was reported missing — made it so prosecutors didn’t need a body to prove the murder.
“Plenty of circumstantial evidence here and the jury obviously thought so because they were out an extremely short amount of time on a very serious case,” Langton said.
Langton also wasn’t buying the arguments of the defense team, who didn’t call any witnesses to the stand.
“What really bothered me was that I never really got a reason on why the defendant just didn’t call the police. I understand he may have been afraid, maybe they were doing some bad things, but this was a dead body,” Langton said. “And if you’re afraid to call the police… What, you’re not afraid to take a dead body, put it in your car and then drive to Highland Park and throw it in a dumpster? That’s not easy to do. You don’t think you’re gonna get caught with a dead body? It just didn’t make sense.”
The defense team also initially suggested Foster had died of a seizure, but offered no firm evidence to back up the claim.
“You can’t just throw a theory of a medical reason out to a jury. You’ve gotta have a doctor come in and say whatever it is. And it better be a credible doctor. Interesting, the prosecution had a medical examiner, a doctor that basically said doing acid and doing pot doesn’t kill you; it’s gotta be something else. So there was just a lack of expert testimony,” Langton said.
“If you’re gonna try to convince a jury that she could’ve died from a seizure or COVID or whatever, you can’t just throw it out and the defense just didn’t give the jury anything to really sink their teeth in, or really in the legal world, have any reasonable doubt,” he said.
Langton noted the loads of circumstantial evidence in this case made it easier for the jury to reach a decision than other murder cases in which there is no body.
“It wasn’t as difficult as it could have been in other cases. It still is a circumstantial case, but when you bring in the technology that the prosecution has these days — phone records, Google searches, that type of thing — it is very, very hard to run away from that type of evidence.”
Brazier is scheduled to be sentenced on June 3. He could serve up to life in prison.
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