The trial of Brandon Letman on two murder charges is now in the hands of the jury, nearly eight years after two people were gunned down in Hartford’s North End.
A 12-person jury was sent into the deliberation room about 4:30 p.m. Monday after attorneys for both sides gave their closing arguments at the end of the trial, taking another step toward possible closure for the families of 19-year-old Cameron Mounds and 21-year-old Ashley Spence.
Families of two victims of fatal CT shooting in 2016 seeking long-awaited resolution to deaths
Mounds’ uncle, Lawrence Mounds Sr., said he started the final day of the trial by shaking hands and giving hugs to Letman’s loved ones, reaching across the courtroom aisle to extend forgiveness.
“After this is over we still have to go out into the world, and we might run into each other in the grocery store,” he said, wearing a city of Hartford sweatshirt in support of his hometown. “It’s coming down to the finish line and when we all walk out of here, guilty or not guilty … there’s no bad blood.”
Letman, a 33-year-old convicted felon from New Britain, is facing multiple charges, including murder and tampering with witnesses in connection with the death of Mounds and Spence on a summer night in 2016.
The cases were turned over to the cold case unit in 2019, the same year Letman was charged in connection with their slayings.
Since the day of his arrest, Mounds said, their family has been getting closer and closer to closing the chapter of grief and pain. And he wants to make sure that it isn’t reopened, whatever the verdict is.
Mounds said he sees the trial as an opportunity for closure and a chance to break generational cycles of trauma and violence.
“There shouldn’t be what they call ‘generational curses,’” stemming from his nephew’s death, he said. “Somewhere along the line it has to be broken, so I’m going to break it for that side of my family.”
Dozens of Mounds’ and Spence’s loved ones packed the courtroom on Monday, wiping tears from their eyes, passing around boxes of tissues and reaching out to comfort one another as Robin Krawczyk, senior assistant state’s attorney, and John Fahey, Supervisory Assistant State’s Attorney and head of the Cold Case Unit at the Office of the Chief State’s Attorney, delivered their closing arguments.
“Let me be very clear about this, Brandon Letman is the shooter,” Fahey said. “Brandon Letman is the killer.”
Prosecutors also addressed claims by the defense that Letman was not the one to fire the bullets.
“The defendant fired all the shots,” Krawczyk said during her closing argument. “No one else was shooting”
When it was his turn for a closing argument, Letman’s defense attorney, Sebastian DeSantis, argued that the state failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Letman committed the killings, calling the state’s case “stale” and “repetitive” and saying that there was no DNA, hair samples or ballistics placing his client at the scene.
“There’s nothing physical that connects Mr. Letman to this crime,” he said.
In their rebuttal, Fahey reminded the jury that a “lack of evidence is not evidence.”
DeSantis also called into question the credibility of witnesses who were uncooperative on the stand, including Daquan Artis, who was brought in from the Department of Corrections and told the judge he did not want to be in court. On the stand, he said he did not remember the account he told investigators in which he named Letman as the gunman that night.
“The whole motive here is sort of on quicksand and there’s no basis for Mr. Letman having committed this crime,” DeSantis said.
State prosecutors reminded the jury that the state is not required to present a motive, but that the jury could consider the motive that Letman was angered by a faulty drug trade.
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Prosecutors have alleged during the trial, which began in April, that Letman opened fire outside of an apartment on Enfield Street after realizing he had been scammed in a drug deal.
Letman allegedly received a bag of fake cocaine in a trade with Mounds, who Letman allegedly duped by trading a fake gun.
Witnesses — some of whom were coaxed into giving their accounts long after the case went cold — told investigators that Letman allegedly then returned to the house and announced “this gun is real” as he pulled out a gun and opened fire.
Mounds was struck as he ran away and Spence was shot three times in the driveway. Both were pronounced dead shortly after.
Prosecutors called multiple eyewitnesses, some who are currently incarcerated, and asked neighbors who lived in or near the home on Enfield Street to describe what they heard and saw when the gunshots rang out that evening.
The state also called to the stand multiple members of law enforcement agencies that were involved in the investigation. The first police officers who arrived at the scene of the shooting testified about efforts to save Spence’s life, followed by cold case investigators who worked the case years later.
Letman’s defense team did not present any witnesses or evidence at trial.
During his closing argument, DeSantis asked the jury to consider how Spence was involved in the incident if she was not involved in the alleged drug and gun trade.
Fahey emphatically responded to that question in his rebuttal.
“You want to know the real reason Ashley Spence is involved? Because he killed her,” he said. “The fact that she was a victim in this case, a decedent, is why she’s involved.”
Spence’s mother and sisters attended the trial for nearly two weeks, listening to evidence and testimony as they said that no matter the verdict, nothing will feel like justice for Spence’s death.
Letman, who on Monday sat quietly in the courtroom wearing a white button down shirt and a white head covering, declined his right to testify in his own defense, telling the judge he did not want to take the stand.
He is being held in lieu of a $2 million bond, court records show.
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