Opinion ID: 1981497
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Murder and Conspiracy Indictments

Text: Edison and his gang moved into the area. In addition to Edison, it included Steven Carter and Quintin Wiggins. The Edison gang did not respect the staked out territories. They sold wherever they pleased. Sylvester Barry and Tyrone Carr composed another dealer group. Ellis was their touter. He was a user. Edison and Wiggins offered Barry and Carr like a thousand dollars for some of the same product which had been supplied to Barry and Carr. Barry and Carr went to their boss but he refused to sell or permit to be sold his product to the Edison gang. Barry testified: that's when the run-in came with us and Joe Edison and Quintin Wiggins and his gang. Barry was afraid of Edison: [T]he history that gang had and he had, Joe Edison, with carrying a gun, yes, I was afraid of him. Ellis made the mistake of telling Sharon Bagley, Carter's girlfriend, that Carter had killed someone called Reggie. Bagley told Carter what Ellis had said. Carter just looked like a ghost or something scared him, you know, he just looked pale ... and he said if he tell you, then he'll tell the man ... the homicide people ... [the police]. On 16 July 1986, Barry and Carr were approached by Edison, Wiggins and Carter near the Hillside Apartments in Cherry Hill. Ellis was nearby but out of earshot. Edison and Wiggins talked to Barry. Edison's hands were inside his dip. To Barry that meant business. That mean if something that was told to you that you didn't do it, that meant your life was in danger. Barry thought that his life was in danger and that Edison was armed. Wiggins told Barry that Barry and Carr were to walk Ellis to the back of the 164 School playground so Edison could murder Ellis. Edison was like you better do it, man. Barry said that he would not do it and started to walk away with Carr and Ellis. However, they walked in the direction of the schoolyard. Wiggins walked close behind so they could not tip off Ellis what was going on. Wiggins was like walking to a drop-off point where Ellis would be. Joe Edison began dropping back behind us at that time. He came out of his pants. He fired one shot at Ernie Ellis. It missed. It made [Ellis] turn to his left. The second shot hit [Ellis] below his eye. After Ernie hit the ground, a third shot was fired that hit him on top of his head. Edison stood overtop of Ellis when he flipped and his head hit the ground. He stopped overtop of Ernie and hit him again at the top of his head. Everybody fled. Edison ran through the woods and dropped off the gun somewhere. Later, Edison said that what he did was for all of us because Ellis was a drug informer. He would have sent us all to jail ... Ernie was an informer. Edison's belief that Ellis was an informer was fed by the fact, as related by Egerton, and referred to by Edison in justifying the murder of Ellis, that on the day of the murder, Officers Bradley and Shields conducted a street arrest for narcotics in the presence of Ernie Ellis and other people. Ernie was not arrested. Ellis's body was found in the schoolyard. There were two gunshot wounds, one below the left eye and one on top of the head. An assistant medical examiner, accepted as an expert in the field of forensic pathology, described them in detail to the jury. She opined that the shots were fired at close range as indicated by a gunpowder stripling pattern around the entrance holes made by the bullets. The path of the wounds was from upwards down and it was a straight shot. The shots occurred in a very short span of time. Two bullets were recovered from the body. The cause of death was the two gunshot wounds to the head, either of which would have been fatal. The manner of death was homicide. The autopsy report and the autopsy protocol photographs were displayed to the jury. A police officer, Detective Harry Egerton, accepted as an expert in the investigation of both drug crimes and homicide, was in charge of the investigation of the crime. A number of photographs depicting the body at the crime scene were admitted in evidence and passed over to the jury. Bullet fragments taken from the skull of Ellis were shown to the jury. Egerton opined that Ellis had been shot at a rather close distance with a large caliber handgun. The detective's inclination at the time was that Ellis knew his assailant. The officer's working hypothesis gleaned from [t]he gunshot wound to the eye, the left eye, was lead stipling around it, which was powder or alleged shavings from the bullet burns in a particular pattern which I've studied before in homicide and from the geometric shape and disbursement of the stipling around the bullet hole, I had felt that whoever was the person who fired the shot into Mr. Ellis' eye was to the left of Mr. Ellis and possibly slightly to the rear of Mr. Ellis and within a reasonably close range. The spent bullets recovered from Ellis's skull were submitted to ballistics. Joseph Kopera, assigned to the Forensic Laboratory Division of the Baltimore City Police Department, firearms identification unit, ballistics was accepted as an expert in the field of ballistics and gunpowder residue analysis. He examined the two spent bullets recovered from Ellis's body. They were .38 caliber and were fired from a revolver. Because of damage from hitting parts of Ellis's body, he was not able to compare them to a suspect gun. Information received by Detective Egerton in his investigation of the homicide during the next few weeks after the murder, caused him to have Edison interviewed. Edison said that Ellis was a friend; they grew up together. Ellis was not one of Edison's customers but a touter for another gang. Edison said he was with Ellis on the evening of the homicide until about 7:30 p.m. About midnight Edison heard Ellis had been killed. Edison did not know who killed him. No one was with Ellis when Edison left him. Edison could not remember where he went after he left Ellis. Information received from interviews with four other persons proved to be conflicting  [n]o two persons said the exact same thing. Everyone said something a little different. But the information led to a Sylvester Barry, nicknamed Cat. Egerton talked to Barry at length with the result that Barry went before the Grand Jury. On 25 October 1986, Egerton obtained warrants for the arrest of Edison, Wiggins, and Carter.