The Akron Legal News

Akron murderer has appeal denied

ANNIE YAMSON
Special to the Legal News
Published: July 15, 2015

The 9th District Court of Appeals recently affirmed the convictions of Gracshawn Thomas, an Akron man who was found guilty of shooting and killing Alphonzo Golden and then trying to hide the evidence.

Thomas appealed from the judgment of the Summit County Court of Common Pleas where he was convicted of aggravated murder, murder, having weapons under disability, tampering with evidence and accompanying firearm specifications following a jury trial.

Case summary states that Golden was waiting at a traffic light on the morning of Sept. 18, 2013 when a tan Buick Rendezvous pulled up alongside the driver’s side of his station wagon.

The driver of the Rendezvous, described by witnesses as an African-American male wearing a black hat and a red, hooded sweatshirt, lowered the front passenger window of his car, extended a gun toward Golden, and fired multiple shots.

Golden was struck twice and died from his injuries.

The driver of the Rendezvous then pulled around the other traffic at the intersection and sped away.

Shortly thereafter, Thomas was seen pulling into the backyard of Joy Strickland in a tan Rendezvous and wearing a “maroon” sweatshirt. Court documents state that he “immediately began cleaning out the vehicle’s interior.”

One of Thomas’ cousins also arrived and began helping Thomas clean out his vehicle.

In the meantime, Golden’s girlfriend learned about the shooting, went to the crime scene and named Thomas as a possible suspect.

During the subsequent investigation, an analysis of Thomas’ cellphone data indicated that his phone had been in the same part of the city as the shooting at the time that it occurred.

One week after the murder, the police issued charges for Thomas’ arrest. The next morning, the tan Rendezvous was found by the police. The car was painted black and set on fire.

Thomas turned himself in to the authorities later that day and was later indicted by a grand jury.

At his trial, Thomas testified on his own behalf. He maintained that he had never met Golden and that, on the morning of the shooting, he was driving a tan Rendezvous that belonged to a relative of his known as “Poon.”

Thomas stated that he was out purchasing large amounts of marijuana that he intended to sell.

When some of the drugs fell out of his pocket and into the car, he pulled into Strickland’s backyard to clean the vehicle out and to return the car to Poon.

A jury found Thomas guilty of the offenses and he was sentenced to 35 years to life in prison.

In his direct appeal to the 9th District court, Thomas assigned three errors to the trial court, the first of which challenged the testimony of Golden’s girlfriend.

The girlfriend testified that Golden had asked her for information about Thomas and his cousin before his death.

She also told the jury that she provided Golden with the cousin’s phone number and that Golden seemed afraid of meeting the cousin.

According to Thomas, that testimony was hearsay. The court of appeals disagreed.

Writing on behalf of the court of appeals’ three-judge appellate panel, Judge Jennifer Hensal stated, “The question that Mr. Golden asked his girlfriend about Mr. Thomas’ cousin was not an assertion and, therefore, not hearsay.”

The girlfriend’s testimony that Golden was afraid was also admissible, the reviewing court ruled, because it involved Golden’s “then existing state of mind.”

Thomas went on to challenge the sufficiency and manifest weight of the evidence supporting his conviction.

He contended his sweatshirt was maroon, not red as witnesses had described, and that the cell phone evidence only proved that he was in the area of the shooting that day, not that he was the killer.

“Circumstantial evidence and direct evidence inherently possess the same probative value,” Hensal wrote. “Accordingly, the fact that there was no direct evidence that Mr. Thomas was responsible for Mr. Golden’s death is not determinative.”

The appellate panel found that the evidence, viewed in a light most favorable to the state, demonstrated that Thomas and Golden had a history.

“According to Mr. Golden’s girlfriend, about nine months before this shooting, one of Mr. Thomas’ cousins was killed,” Hensal wrote.

After the death, Golden apparently became concerned for his safety and began driving his truck because its height allowed him to view his surroundings.

On the day of his death, Golden’s truck would not start and he had to drive the station wagon in which he was killed.

“The fact that Mr. Golden was shot that morning suggests that the shooter had been waiting for an opportunity to kill Mr. Golden,” Hensal wrote, also noting that the car that Thomas was seen driving, the sweatshirt and the fact that the car was painted and burned the day after charges were filed contributed to the circumstantial evidence against Thomas.

“We therefore conclude that the evidence supported a finding that Mr. Thomas shot and killed Mr. Golden with prior calculation and design,” Hensal wrote.

Additionally, the court of appeals held that the jury did not lose its way when it chose not to believe Thomas’ version of events, therefore, his conviction was not against the manifest weight of the evidence.

The judgment of the Summit County court was affirmed with Judges Beth Whitmore and Julie Schafer joining Hensal to form the majority.

The case is cited State v. Thomas, 2015-Ohio-2377.

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