KINGSTON, N.Y. — Ulster County Judge Bryan Rounds on Tuesday gave prosecutors another 24 hours to produce key witnesses to the shooting death last year of Ashley Stephan Dixon.
The continuance was the second in as many days granted to the District Attorney’s Office in the Corey Q. Smith murder trial. It came following a nearly hourlong conference between Rounds and Senior Assistant District Attorney Gerard Van Loan.
Following the conference, Rounds sent jurors home for the day, telling them that “the case is still with the people,” but that “we are unable to proceed today with testimony.”
Once jurors left the courtroom, Smith’s attorney, William T. Martin, asked Rounds to compel Van Loan to disclose the names of the two witnesses, who Van Loan said are the final witnesses he will call before resting the prosecution’s case.
Rounds denied Martin’s request, saying the defense is aware of the witnesses’ identities because they were on the witness list provided at the outset of the trial and because Rounds issued protective orders for the two.
“You know who they are,” the judge said.
Although Rounds declined to require Van Loan to name his final two witnesses in open session, one of the two is Dixon’s girlfriend, Janai Lawrence. During his opening statement to the jury, Van Loan said Lawrence would testify that she drove Smith to the Stuyvesant Charter apartment complex in Kingston on Feb. 11, 2020, to meet Dixon and watched from only a few feet away as Smith shot Dixon. In court Monday, Van Loan played for jurors an audio recording from a nearby surveillance camera that he said captured the sounds of three gunshots and Lawrence screaming, “Corey, no! Corey, no!”
That recording was largely unintelligible to a Freeman reporter and others who must watch the proceedings on closed-circuit TV in another part of the Ulster County Courthouse due to social-distancing restrictions put in place by the state Office of Court Administration in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Freeman has been unable to determine the name of the second witness.
Smith, 36, a Bronx man who has ties to Kingston, is charged with second-degree murder for the fatal shooting of Dixon, 31, of Kingston.
Prosecutors say Smith shot Dixon three times with a .40-caliber handgun outside the Styevasant Charter complex. Dixon was pronounced dead a short time later at HealthAlliance Hospital’s Broadway campus.
Smith was taken into custody on Feb. 12, 2020, the day after the killing, for a probation violation. He was charged the following month with killing Dixon.
On Friday, Dr. Charles Catanese, the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy on Dixon, said Dixon was struck four times by three bullets, including one that struck him in the neck, exited and then entered Dixon’s right upper arm. Catanese said a shot to the chest caused Dixon’s death.
During pretrial hearings held in June, Van Loan alleged the shooting was a gang hit. The prosecutor said Smith was a member of G-Shine, a subset of the Bloods street gang, and killed Dixon, who Van Loan said was a member of a Bloods subset known as Sex, Money, Murder, because Dixon had become a liability to the gang.
Martin has denied his client was in a gang, and Van Loan has not presented any evidence so far to tie either man to a gang.
The trial is expected to resume at 1 p.m. Wednesday. The Freeman will live-tweet the proceedings.
