Defense Assails Investigation in Closing Arguments for 2021 Murder Trial

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On April 4, defense attorney Jason Ott urged the jury in his closing argument to use their common sense to find his client not guilty of murdering 29-year-old Aaron Adams and injuring three other victims.

Defendant Michael Harvey is charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder, two counts of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, conspiracy to use a firearm in a felony violent crime and giving a false statement to a police officer.

This was the second trial that Ott has advocated for Harvey; previous coverage notes that a mistrial was declared on Jan. 11 for unknown reasons.

Ott was critical of the prosecution’s case and the police work that supported it. First, he pointed out how cooperative his client was answering Baltimore Police Department (BPD) investigators’ questions.

The lawyer summarized that there was no gun recovered, no proof of intent, no connection between co-conspirators according to witnesses or phone records and overall no evidence that his client was even present at the 600 block of Laurens Street, where the murder took place.

Furthermore, despite the prosecutor’s reasoning that police waited so long to charge Harvey because crime labs were backed up from COVID, Ott criticized the police for not caring enough about his client to diligently investigate the case.

For instance, one detective allegedly showed up to testify without the proper notes to verify his statements. Ott also criticized the prosecutor for displaying the wrong law in her PowerPoint slide for the jury to read until Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Gregory Sampson pointed out the mistake.

The prosecutor rebutted by discussing one aspect of the case that Ott failed to address in his closing argument. The defendant allegedly called his child’s mother and told her to lie to the police by reporting his minivan stolen. She then defended BPD’s investigative skills, citing recovered cell phones with impenetrable passwords as one of the many examples of why gaps in the amount of evidence were out of their control.

She concluded by shifting the blame that Ott placed on the BPD investigators’ alleged shortcomings to the broader issue of gun violence in Baltimore.

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