MURDER TRIAL Jurors hear videotaped statement

Defense attorneys asked for a mistrial but were denied.
By BOB JACKSON
VINDICATOR COURTHOUSE REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Jurors were allowed to hear a videotaped statement from the man who refused to testify a day earlier in the aggravated murder trial of Anthony Anderson.
Anderson, 24, of Kenneth Street, is on trial in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, charged with three counts of aggravated murder and one count each of attempted aggravated murder and aggravated robbery. He faces the death penalty if he is convicted.
A co-defendant, Kevin Calwise, was called to the witness stand Tuesday but refused to testify. He was convicted of identical charges last year and is serving three consecutive life sentences.
Judge R. Scott Krichbaum granted a request Wednesday from assistant prosecutors Jay Macejko and Timothy Franken to show the seven female and five male jurors a videotaped statement Calwise made to police last year.
What he said: In the tape, Calwise told police investigators that Anderson was the main offender in the robbery and killings. He admitted shooting at one of the victims, 4-year-old DeShun Moreland, but said he did so only because Anderson forced him at gunpoint.
Moreland and his 21-year-old mother, LaShawnda Aziz, were killed, as was Ms. Aziz's unborn baby. Her daughter, Brea Aziz, who was 3 at the time, was shot but survived. The shooting was in November 1998 at Ms. Aziz's Lansdowne Boulevard home on the city's East Side.
Defense attorneys Louis DeFabio and James Gentile asked for a mistrial, arguing that use of the tape violated Anderson's right to cross-examine witnesses who testify against him. The judge denied the request.
Prieto: Detective Sgt. Jose Morales of the Youngstown Police Department testified that Ms. Aziz's live-in boyfriend, Wadell Casey, was originally a suspect, but police began getting tips the next day that Anderson and Jamar Prieto were responsible.
Prieto, 20, of Lansdowne Boulevard, has pleaded guilty to four counts of complicity to attempted murder and one count of complicity to aggravated robbery and is expected to testify against Anderson.
Police say Prieto drove Anderson and Calwise to and from Ms. Aziz's house and provided a gun that Calwise used in the shootings. Prosecutors have recommended that Prieto be sentenced to six years in prison, though he won't be sentenced until after Anderson's case is completed.
Bullets: Dr. Diana M. Grant, a forensic examiner for the FBI in Washington, D.C., testified that bullets found by police at the crime scene, in Anderson's house and in a clip in a vacant lot near the crime scene all came from the same manufactured batch.
Grant said the chemical composition of each batch of bullets is different. The bullets she tested showed the same levels of chemicals, which means they were from the same batch. Prosecutors said all of the bullets belonged to Anderson.
bjackson@vindy.com