Closing arguments were delivered on Oct. 23 in the case of a 68-year-old Baltimore man accused of killing his elderly neighbor at the Embassy Apartments over four years ago, with attorneys debating the validity of forensic evidence and an apparent confession made by the defendant during his initial police interview.
Reginald Lively is charged with first-degree murder and two counts of concealing a dangerous weapon in connection to the early morning murder of John Hall III, 58, who was found deceased in his apartment on May 28, 2021. A maintenance worker responding to a call for service in Hall’s third-floor unit on the 3800 block of Clarks Lane discovered his body covered by a blanket. An autopsy later revealed 88 sharp force wounds and 17 blunt force trauma wounds, the majority of which were located along the right side of his body.
Forensic analysis of Hall’s wounds and their location on his body suggested he was lying on his left side on his couch in the living room, watching television, when he was attacked. As the prosecution also noted, “The crime scene tells us a lot.”
Blood pooling was discovered on the couch, as well as on the ground next to the couch, suggesting that Lively continued to attack Hall after he fell off the couch, and that Hall’s body remained on the floor for a significant amount of time prior to the initial police response.
Despite the extreme number of wounds Hall sustained, no 911 calls were made to report an assault. The prosecution posited “nobody heard anything” because the assailant likely began attacking Hall with the blunt force weapon, which “completely debilitated him” and rendered him unable to call for help.
“No one heard a thing,” the prosecution said. “He couldn’t scream because he was knocked out.”
Two weeks later, on June 11, 2021, detectives brought Lively down to the station for questioning. Lively’s story continued to transform during the taped interview, which reportedly lasted over eight hours. He was demonstrating “verbal tap dancing,” the prosecution claimed.
In one clip, after detectives vacated the room, Lively was shown verbally practicing a story to tell detectives regarding his whereabouts and actions that day. In another clip, seemingly unaware that he was being taped, he delivered an apparent confession. “They got me, boy, my life is over,” he was heard saying.
Apartment surveillance cameras captured Lively’s movements around the complex the day of the incident, allowing the prosecution to determine a window for Hall’s death. Detectives believe Hall was killed between 6:30 a.m., when Hall left his neighbor a voicemail, and 7:49 a.m. Police responded to the scene approximately three hours later.
Evidence recovered from the scene included two sets of clothes that were analyzed for DNA, the aforementioned blood pooling, and DNA samples lifted from the doorknob on Hall’s front door. DNA lifted from a pair of Lively’s shorts was analyzed and produced a probability of 3.71 nonillion that the sample belonged to Hall. One nonillion has 30 zeros, a number the prosecution called “very determinate” it was only the victim.
The prosecution continued by lambasting the case’s DNA analyst for her sloppy work, noting she confused her left from her right when reporting her findings about a pair of shorts that was recovered, incorrectly labelled “potential blood” as “blood,” and neglected to run DNA samples through the probabilistic genotyping software TrueAllele, which calculates the statistical likelihood that a person’s DNA is present on physical evidence.
On the stand, she admitted she was promised $180 per hour for her testimony, and that she was paid accordingly even for the time spent writing the report that contained the aforementioned errors.
The prosecution called her testimony “absolutely worthless,” and told other attorneys in the gallery that she was “a clown.”
“On May 28, 2021, who was John Hall III?” he asked jurors as the hearing drew to a close.
Hall was a recovering alcoholic who enjoyed outings at casinos, and attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings to maintain his sobriety. He struggled with hepatitis and gout, the latter of which caused crystallization in his hand and made walking an excruciating and painstaking ordeal. His daughter, who testified at trial, was his primary caregiver. Hall was relatively introverted, and had a “small circle” of friends and a family “that misses him dearly,” the prosecution said.
Hall’s relatively insulated social life was reflected in the fact that his own DNA was not recovered from his apartment front door’s knob. Importantly, Lively’s was. The DNA analyst attributed this fact that “people could run up and down the hall touching doors,” a statement that elicited disbelieving laughter from Hall’s family members and the prosecution.
Defense attorney Brad Macfee attempted to convince jurors to consider “what we don’t know” about the case, but struggled to deliver an argument without facing objections — of which Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Sylvester B. Cox sustained a majority.
Conversely, the prosecution presented a clear picture of his interpretation of the events leading up to Hall’s death. Jurors listened as he recalled the “very determinate” presence of Lively’s DNA on Hall’s doorknob and clothes, the fact that Lively changed and discarded clothes and shoes after he left Embassy Apartments, and the elevator lights that indicated Lively did indeed travel to the third floor.
Jurors are currently deliberating Lively’s charges.
