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By
Sage Cho
- December 13, 2024
Court
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Daily Stories
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Homicides
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Shooting
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Victims
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Counsel gave closing statements in a murder trial before Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Judge Lynn Stewart Mays on Dec. 13.
Dominic Miller, 29, is charged with first-degree murder, firearm usage in a felony or violent crime, and having a handgun on his person and vehicle in connection with a July 11, 2023 fatal shooting that occurred on the 1800 block of Pennsylvania Avenue. The victim, Jonathan Williams, 37, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Police responders found Williams in the driver’s seat of his black Honda Accord with 12 gunshot wounds to his body. The ShotSpotter detection system alerted police to 11 of the 12 gunshots. The back window of the victim’s vehicle was shattered, presumably by gunfire.
Video surveillance evidence recovered from a pharmacy across the street captured a blue grey Hyundai Tucson, later identified as Miller’s, stopping parallel to Williams’ vehicle for several seconds before driving off. Investigators also discovered a bullet hole in the back door of Miller’s vehicle that pointed outward, as if a gun had been discharged from the back seat.
Defense attorney Michael Tomko argued that Miller could not have attained a sufficient angle to shoot Williams or Williams’ back window from his own driver’s seat. Not only did Miller stop his own vehicle parallel to Williams’ car, investigators found Williams with his seat fully reclined, positioning his head and torso at a lower angle between the car’s front and rear. The bullet hole in the back door could have resulted from a previous incident, Tomko said.
A firearms expert had previously testified that the fully loaded .45-caliber handgun allegedly recovered from Miller’s house seemed to match the evidence found at the scene. Forensics experts tested skin cell samples recovered from the gun and found an extremely high likelihood that they belonged to Miller. The likelihood ratio was approximately 3.45 octillion.
Tomko contested the validity of the results, calling it “guesswork” and levying the possibility that Miller’s skin cells settled on the gun as a result of DNA transfer. He also questioned the investigators’ diligence for their failure to obtain evidence from Williams’ phone and car and suggested that Miller was falsely accused of the crime.
“You have him in your charge and we trust you,” Tomko said to the jury. “Please find him not guilty of all charges.”
Prior to jury trial, Miller had pleaded not guilty to all counts with which he was charged. The trial remains active.