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By
Racquel Bazos [former]
- June 11, 2024
Court
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A 2012 murder trial in Baltimore City Circuit Court will hinge on the testimony of a “complicated” witness according to opening statements June 11.
Ronald Eaton Cornish, 37, is charged with first-degree murder, firearm use in a felony violent crime, having a handgun in a vehicle on a public road, having a handgun on his person and firearm possession with a felony conviction for the 2012 death of 26-year-old Warren Boone.
In her opening statement before Judge John A. Howard, the prosecutor told jurors that Boone’s body was found in a wooded area behind the apartment complex on the 5100 block of Goodnow Road. The witness who identified Cornish as the suspect was, she admitted, a “very complicated individual.” But she claimed FBI phone-tracing evidence would corroborate his testimony.
Defense attorney Koryn High compared the case to the Preakness horse race. She said jockeys can’t switch horses midway through the race even though they’re losing.
“The [prosecution’s] entire case is a jockey who rode one horse,” she said, referring to the witness. She said his statements had inconsistencies, his story was not credible and the prosecution “cannot ride that horse to a conviction.”
Documents from the District Court of Maryland state Boone’s body was discovered with multiple gunshot wounds approximately 40 feet from the complex’s parking lot on Nov. 8, 2012. Baltimore Police Department investigators believe Boone drove Cornish to the crime scene, where Cornish allegedly shot Boone and drove away in his car.
In 2016, a jury convicted Cornish of Boone’s murder in 2016, for which he was sentenced to life plus 20 years. In 2018, the Supreme Court of Maryland ruled Cornish deserved a hearing within Baltimore City Circuit Court to decide whether he could get a new trial due to the discovery of new evidence, which were statements from the “very complicated” witness. The Baltimore City Circuit Court denied Cornish a new trial, but the Appellate Court of Maryland reversed this decision in 2022.
Testimony began Tuesday morning.