Defense lawyer: Monitor bracelet will prove innocence

By ED RUNYAN

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

YOUNGSTOWN — The defense attorney in a felonious assault trial said he’ll call a worker for Community Corrections Association to testify that his client could not have committed the armed robbery he’s accused of — because his monitoring bracelet proves he wasn’t there.

Atty. David Engler said he will call Jessica Brown of CCA to the stand today to show that LaMar McKinney, 19, of Griffith Street, did not leave the apartment building where he lived May 21 at the time he is accused of robbing John Canty Jr. of Warren at gunpoint in the Westlake Terrace housing project. The trial got under way Tuesday.

J. Michael Thompson, an assistant Mahoning County prosecutor, called Canty as his first witness in the courtroom of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge R. Scott Krichbaum.

Canty testified that he and his wife, Chalice Canty, were visiting his wife’s uncle, Richard Dowdy, in Dowdy’s Westlake Terrace apartment around 7 p.m. when McKinney entered the apartment and demanded money.

After Chalice Canty agreed to give him $20 of the $40 he demanded, McKinney left and returned a short time later with a gun, John Canty testified.

Canty said McKinney ordered him to empty his pockets, which Canty did. McKinney then took the $200 and prescription drugs from him and left.

If convicted on the single aggravated robbery charge, McKinney could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison.

Witnesses

In his opening statement, Thompson said the trial will bring forth witnesses with some character flaws of their own.

“There are no angels in it,” he said.

John Canty faces domestic violence and another charge in Trumbull and Mahoning counties and was convicted on a number of charges in the 1990s. Canty said his wife has abused drugs in the past and owed McKinney money for drugs.

In his opening statement, Engler said McKinney was living more than 75 feet away from Dowdy’s apartment the night of the robbery. The ankle bracelet and monitoring will prove that he was not in Dowdy’s apartment at the time of the robbery.

Engler said Canty is motivated to falsely accuse his client of a robbery because of a relationship between his wife and McKinney — something Canty denied on the witness stand.

runyan@vindy.com