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Mattapan Massacre: Jury starts deliberation – Metro US

Mattapan Massacre: Jury starts deliberation

A day after defense attorneys tore in to the prosecution’s key witness, jurors today will begin deliberating the fate of two men accused of murdering four people in one of the city’s most horrific crimes in recent years.

Attorneys for Dwayne Moore, the accused gunman, and Edward Washington, his alleged accomplice, said during closing arguments yesterday that the men were being wrongfully accused based on false testimony from the prosecution’s key witness, Kimani Washington.

They tried to create doubt in the minds of the jurors by attacking Washington’s credibility.

“They want you to condemn my client based on the testimony of Kimani Washington,” said John Amabile, Moore’s attorney. “If this wasn’t so serious that would almost be laughable.”

Washington was one of the dozens of witnesses who testified during the course of the nearly monthlong trial. He made a plea agreement with prosecutors and will likely spend between 16 and 18 years in jail for his role in the 2010 robbery that left four people dead, including a toddler and his mother. Prosecutors have said Washington wasn’t at the scene when the shots rang out.

The defense has tried to poke holes in the case by highlighting Washington’s history as a criminal and his admission of being a pimp.

“He sold this cock and bull story to the [district attorney’s] office and he’s getting out of the can,” Amabile said.

Edward Washington’s attorney John Cunha said Washington manipulated the facts of the incident.

Prosecution:?Washington a ‘gangster’ and a ‘thug’

Assistant District Attorney Edmond Zabin spent a significant portion of his closing argument yesterday trying to set at ease any jurors who may be doubting Kimani Washing­ton’s testimony.

“Kimani Washington is a gangster. Kimani Washington is a thug,” Zabin said. “We are not telling you to like him … the question is whether he is telling the truth.”

Zabin said other individual sources and even forensic evidence corroborated Washington’s testimony. However, he admitted there was no direct forensic link — DNA or fingerprints — to the defendants and the evidence.

“The evidence you heard in this case is … deliberate, premeditated first-degree murder,” he said.