Counsel Cites ‘Red Herrings’ and a ‘Sloppy Job’ in 2020 Homicide Closing

By Sage Cho - January 21, 2025
Court | Daily Stories | Homicides | Shooting | Victims |

On Jan. 17, counsel argued over circumstantial and physical evidence as they presented closing statements in the trial of 33-year-old homicide defendant Jermaine Sanders. Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Lawrence R. Daniels presided over the hearing.

Sanders is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit armed robbery, armed robbery, first-degree assault, having a loaded handgun on his person and in a vehicle, firearm possession with a felony conviction, and two counts of firearm usage in a felony or violent crime. The counts are related to a March 29, 2020 shooting on the 500 block of N. Curley Street that killed 30-year-old Kimberly McCubbin and left her male companion injured. 

The day of the incident, 25-year-old Deangelo Rogers allegedly facilitated a drug deal between Sanders and McCubbin, who sold Percocet on the street after the COVID-19 pandemic because she needed money. McCubbin was accompanied by a companion in her white Mercedes-Benz sedan, when she allegedly intended to meet Sanders for the sale.

McCubbin’s companion testified that the perpetrator – whom he described as “short, with a beard” – pulled up his hood before he entered and sat in the car’s rear passenger’s seat. A physical altercation broke out inside the vehicle after McCubbin’s companion heard what he believed was a pistol being cocked, leading the perpetrator to tell them, “Go up the hill, I’m going to kill you two.”

Meanwhile, as McCubbin was driving the car, the attacker then used the gun to whip her companion who, in a bid to protect himself from further harm, opened the passenger door and “tumbled out” onto the intersection between E. Monument Street and N. Curley Street. 

Before falling onto the road, he witnessed the attacker grabbing McCubbin’s hair and holding the gun to her throat before instructing her to continue driving, which she did. Footage from eight nearby CitiWatch cameras, as well as several private surveillance cameras belonging to nearby stores, captured the car moving in the general area and McCubbin’s companion falling out of the vehicle.

Police responded to the scene after a phone call from the area notified them of a robbery, gunshot sounds and a Black male fleeing the scene. Evidence depicted in the video included a prescription pill bottle belonging to McCubbin, personal effects that would likely belong in a purse and a silky black skullcap that the prosecution likened to a durag.

A forensic scientist later swabbed the cap and likely matched its DNA to Sanders. Crime lab technicians processed the victim’s vehicle the night of the incident and found a projectile and scratches along the driver’s side of the vehicle from where it had scraped a Subaru on the 2900 block of E. Madison Street.

A testifying forensic scientist said she used probability genotyping software TrueAllele to match a print found on the inside of the rear passenger’s side window to Sanders with a likelihood of 48.7 septillion.

On March 30, 2020, a day after the incident, an autopsy was performed on McCubbin. Gunpowder stippling around a wound on the left side of her neck suggested that she was shot at close range. Examiners also found a wound on her right hand but were unable to confirm its cause. 

During his closing statement, defense attorney Donald Wright pointed to withheld evidence and questioned investigators’ methods of processing evidence recovered from the vehicle.

“There are a number of things in this case that the state withheld from you intentionally,” said Wright. 

According to Wright, three witnesses in the case failed to identify Sanders during police photograph arrays. McCubbin’s companion had also previously testified that he was unable to clearly see the attacker’s face at the time of the incident. Wright suggested that the perpetrator could have been another man whose prints were found on the exterior of McCubbin’s vehicle. 

Wright noted that Sanders’ print had degraded despite being in the vehicle’s interior and pointed to the three prints found on the vehicle’s exterior that scientists matched to another man. These prints were fresher and clearer than Sanders.’ The latter prints were naturally subject to more wear and weather than the interior print, said Wright, questioning why police failed to investigate the other man.

“I’m asking you to consider all of the facts, even the ones that they don’t want you to hear,” said Wright. 

He criticized the detective’s inability to follow up on other leads, such as hair found in the black cap, and called the investigation “a sloppy job.” At some point after the vehicle was initially processed, said Wright, investigators reprocessed it and found a shell casing under the passenger’s seat that was labelled with a “40.”

“The science in this case can’t misidentify someone,” said the prosecution. Wright’s statement, he said, had “red herrings all throughout.”

The prosecution went on to claim that Sanders demonstrated guilt multiple times throughout the investigation. He showed the jury a recorded phone call allegedly between Sanders and his on-and-off girlfriend in which Sanders expressed a desire to kill himself, as well as text messages between the two obtained from the girlfriend’s phone, which she voluntarily turned over to detectives on April 16, 2020. 

On May 11, 2021, Sanders reportedly said in a call to his girlfriend that he was charged with first-degree murder and second-degree murder. He had not been charged with either at the time. The prosecution framed the call as an admission of guilt. 

The jury continues to deliberate.