Jury acquits man in Elkton motel murder case

Jurors deliberated for approximately two hours on Thursday afternoon at the conclusion of a four-day trial, before finding the defendant — North East-area resident Shane Morgan Hall, 31 — not guilty of all 16 charges. (One day was spent solely on jury selection.)

Hall stood accused of firing four shots into the upper body of Kenneth Lee Brown, 46, of Elkton, inside Room 208 at the Sunrise Inn at 262 Belle Hill Rd. at approximately 1:30 a.m. on Jan. 1, about 90 minutes after the start of 2022. Brown died from his gunshot wounds a short time later.

Opening statements and closing arguments by the prosecution and the defense, in addition to trial testimony, indicate that Hall and Brown were partying in Room 208 with three other acquaintances — two women and another man — when Hall overdosed on a drug, prompting the two women to take measures to revive him. Prosecutors did not specify the drug, but trial testimony indicated that it was heroin.

After Hall had been revived, he noticed that his money was missing and accused Brown of stealing the cash from him while he had been incapacitated from the drug overdose, according to the prosecution and trial testimony. Brown denied the allegation and then Hall pulled a handgun and shot him at close range, prosecutors alleged.

Assistant State’s Attorney Robert Sentman told jurors in his opening statement on Tuesday (Aug. 2) that Hall murdered Brown “in cold blood” because he believed Brown had stole from him, before commenting, “It was nothing worth losing your life over.” Sentman and Deputy State’s Attorney Patricia Fitzgerald prosecuted Hall at trial.

Three purported eyewitnesses fled Room 208 immediately after the shooting, according to the prosecution. Video gleaned from a security camera showed Hall leaving a “significantly noticeable time later,” closing the door to Room 208 behind him after he exited, prosecutors reported. One of purported eyewitnesses called 911.

Sentman told jurors that at least three people witnessed the fatal shooting. He emphasized that it is rare to have eyewitnesses in a murder case.

Hall’s defense lawyer, Michael J. Halter, however, painted the eyewitnesses as unreliable while addressing the jury. Halter noted that the use of hard illegal drugs was taking place inside Room 208, differing drastically from the champagne-toast consumption typically associated with a New Year’s Eve celebration.

“They are not pristine angels . . . They are drug dealers and prostitutes,” Halter opined in his opening statement, before urging jurors to “judge their credibility on the witness stand.”

The two women who purportedly were inside Room 208 at the time of the fatal shooting were under guard and clad in jail uniforms when testifying on Tuesday (Aug. 2). The women are incarcerated in unrelated criminal cases.

One of them told jurors that she had been partying with Hall before the incident and that she, too, had used heroin shortly before the fatal shooting. That woman testified that she was standing beside Hall when he fired multiple shots at Brown, spurring her to leave Room 208.

On the witness stand, she identified Hall as the shooter, gesturing toward him seated at the defense table.

A man testifying as a defense witness later indicated that, in the days after the incident, that woman told him that she is the one who shot Brown and that she had fired seven shots.

The other woman who purportedly was inside Room 208 at the time of the fatal shooting did not make a courtroom identification of Hall as the shooter while testifying. Nor did she identify Hall as the shooter while viewing a photo lineup during her police interview.

As for the sole male eyewitness, he did not make a courtroom identification of Hall as the shooter, either. He, too, did not identify Hall as the shooter while looking at a photo array during his police interview.

The charging document made public after Hall’s arrest on Jan. 5 indicated that “multiple eyewitnesses” identified the only white man inside Room 208 as the shooter. Moreover, that court document indicated that Hall was the only white man inside Room 208 at the time of the fatal shooting of Brown, who was black. The sole male eyewitness also is black.

Hall elected not to testify in his own defense.

Halter’s opening statement to the jury, along with trial testimony, indicated that police had developed a different male suspect shortly after the fatal shooting and took him into custody, before arresting Hall and charging him with the murder of Brown.

Investigators did not recover the handgun used in the murder, only spent bullet casings and bullets that had been fired, according to trial testimony. Investigators also did not recover any forensic evidence to link Hall to the shooting, such as DNA and fingerprints.

Court records indicate that Hall had been held in the Cecil County Detention Center on no bond since his Jan. 5 arrest.