Man found not guilty in Richmond slaying
A Richmond jury yesterday found a 24-year-old man not guilty of fatally shooting another man this year in the East End.
The jury deliberated about an hour and 15 minutes before declaring Brandon Jefferson not guilty of first-degree murder and a firearm charge in the Feb. 28 killing of Orlando C. Alston, 24.
Alston was shot in the back after an argument on Phaup Street in the Fairfield Court public-housing complex. Police found his body just before 3 a.m.
Vernon Lee Thomas, who was accused of providing the weapon used to kill Alston, pleaded guilty yesterday to drug and weapons charges.
-- Reed Williams
Reader Reactions
It’s like this no physical evidence not guilty. That’s just commen sense. Just cause he was in the neighborhood that night does not make him a murderer. If that’s the case everybody that’s out there was guilty. People are entitled to feel how they want about the case but unless you were there and heard the Commonwealth’s weak case with no evidence then how can you question his innocense. For those that are related to the victim it doesn’t bring the victim back for accusing Brandon. If it’s nothing that ties him to the murder but the fact that he was in the neighborhood how can you say he did it. Take a hard look at the facts. It was people close to the victim that was out there the night it happened that disappeared during the process of the shooting that did not show up for court so who’s in the wrong? If people really cared about the victim why didn’t more people show up to convict Brandon Jefferson. It would have been wrong for him to spend all his life in jail for a crime he did not commit. At the end of the day God is the judge and he found Brandon not guilty. Thank you to the jury and the great lawyer that fought hard for Brandon.
the jury found him not guilty & that’s that! Unfortunatley that is how it goes & my family is all too familiar with it. In 2001 we were victims of a home invasions where a crack head with a gun crawled thru an open window in the middle of the night, we woke up to the noise & my husband was shot in the head when he confronted the man. The crack head’s family hired him a good attorney & opted for a jury trial. He admitted on the stand to the break in, possesion of the gun & shooting my husband, yet somehow the jury found him not guilty on 5 felony counts & we have the pleasure of seeing him every time he visits his family that still lives in our neighborhood. Oh and yes, according to the then commonwealths attorney in the city of richmond, jury trials cannot be appealed! the judge in our trial actually held the jury afterwards & repremanded then for almost an hour, apoligizing to our family because he thought it was outragous but did tell us there was absolutley nothing he could do about it!
Seriously, why don’t you just write your next story in the form of a Haiku poem?
I can’t understand it either you found the person who shot my cousin not guilty but the one who gave him the gun 2 kill him is found guilty. RTD I would like a little more info on why the guy Brandon Jefferson was found not guilty. Was it not enough evidence or no one testified against him? I just want justice 2 b served.
Okay, I’m confused. How did the dude that supposedly did the shooting get found NOT GUILTY, but the dude that supposedly gave him the gun is found guilty. RTD we need more info. Why was the dude found not guilty??? Every since this new format, I feel the stories have been lacking. I can’t piece it together alone!!!
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