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Trial begins in South Side murder case
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
The mother of a 17-year-old who was killed in September 2011 testified Monday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court that she talked to her son just before he died, and she gave him money earlier that day for a car.
The first witness in the trial of 22-year-old Frankie Hudson Jr., who is charged with killing her son, Josh Davis, on the front porch of her home while she was there, Marsha Watkins broke into tears.
She recounted one of the last things her son said to her just before he went to meet some people on their porch.
“He said, ‘You pay for the cost to be boss,’” Watkins testified. “He said, ‘You take good care of us.’”
Jurors were seated before visiting Judge Paul Mitrovich to hear the case against Hudson, who faces charges of aggravated robbery and aggravated murder in the death of Davis. Prosecutors said he was killed by two men who tried to rob him of some marijuana he was selling.
The other defendant in the case, Lamar Reese, was found guilty of similar charges in April 2014. Hudson was to go on trial in December but a mistrial was declared when there were not enough jurors left in the jury pool to select two alternates.
Hudson faces the same charges in a separate case in the 2010 slaying of a man who was working at an Overland Avenue market and already is serving a prison sentence for pleading guilty to being a member of the South Side H Block street gang.
Watkins testified that earlier in the day she gave her son $1,000 to help him get a new car because he was becoming more responsible. She said they were talking in their home just before he was killed and he received a phone call and said he had to go. She heard gunshots a few minutes later and discovered her son’s body on the front porch.
“I was yelling, ‘Get up! Get up!’” she said before calling 911.
Watkins said she never got the $1,000 back.
One of Hudson’s attorneys, Frank Cassese, told jurors in opening statements that his client did not hatch the idea to rob Davis and, in fact, left a gathering of friends who discussed it and walked home.
Cassese told jurors not to rely on the testimony of the prosecution’s main witness, Aaron Triplett, who changed his story to police several times about who was involved and was granted immunity from prosecution if he agreed to testify against Hudson and Reese,
“He [Triplett] did not get a deal; He got THE deal,” Cassese said.
Assistant Prosecutor Martin Desmond told jurors in his opening statement that several witnesses will testify that the last thing they heard Davis say before shots rang was “mom, mom, mom.”
Desmond said witnesses will testify that Hudson admitted shooting Davis because the robbery went bad, and that he pleaded with Triplett in a letter sent from the county jail not to talk to police.