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A suspected gang member charged in three separate shootings over the course of a few months last year might be spending the rest of his life in prison.
An Allen Superior Court jury convicted Anthony A. Parish late Wednesday in the shooting death of 30-year-old Antoine Woods, who was found dead in his car near the Dove Shack bar Aug. 25, 2008.
Jurors spent five hours in deliberation before reaching a verdict about 9:30 p.m. They found Parish, 20, guilty of murder, robbery, possession of a handgun without a license and felony murder – participating in a robbery that results in a killing.
Parish, a suspected member of the D Boys, will be sentenced Dec. 18 and could get 65 years in prison. He is already serving sentences of 40 and 50 years – to be served one after the other – for convictions in two non-fatal shootings, one also in August 2008 and one in October 2008.
Over two days, jurors heard testimony from several witnessess whose credibility was questioned.
Allen County Deputy Prosecutors Steve Godfrey and Jason Custer relied on a convicted felon, who claimed that Parish had admitted to the killing shortly after it happened. Defense attorney John Bohdan called Parish’s mother, grandmother and then-girlfriend to the stand in hopes they would give his client an alibi. All three told different stories, mixing up days and times when they last saw Parish at home.
“I couldn’t wait for them to come in,” Custer told the jury during his closing arguments. “Nobody could keep it straight.”
Godfrey and Custer buttressed their case with what they believed was hard-enough evidence to get a conviction.
A videotape – reportedly recorded hours before the killing – showed Parish waving a gun similar to the one used to put bullets in Woods’ stomach and head. A photograph posted on MySpace.com showed Parish wearing a silver chain and medallion taken off of Woods’ body after he was killed – the same medallion that Parish’s grandmother tried to hide from police when they searched her home, according to court records and testimony.
Phone records showed calls from Parish’s cell phone bouncing off the only tower in the area of the Dove Shack at the time of the killing.
Prosecutors also showed the jury the .38-caliber revolver that ballistic tests showed was the murder weapon – found in Parish’s car during a police traffic stop.
“All this evidence is circumstantial,” Bohdan said during his closing remarks. “It doesn’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Bohdan called Mack Porter, accused of killing a teenager and in the Allen County Jail awaiting trial, to the stand to explain the phone records. Porter claimed he had Parish’s cell phone at the time of the killing and was driving near the Dove Shack making calls.
Porter said Parish called from his home to his cell phone around the time of the killing, but Parish’s home phone number does not show up on any phone records. Also, Porter said he used the phone off and on for six months, although Parish had signed up for it only two months before the killing.
While prosecutors shot holes in Porter’s testimony during their closing arguments, Bohdan tried to discredit one of their key witnesses – 24-year-old Rico J. Parrish.
A former friend of Anthony Parish, Rico Parrish claimed the two had been partying and doing drugs at a south-side carwash, where the video of Anthony Parish with the gun was recorded.
Later, Anthony Parish left with a group for the Dove Shack. He returned with Woods’ medallion and said he had done “a petty murder,” Rico Parrish testified.
Bohdan questioned why Rico Parrish, who was with Anthony Parish during at least one of his previous shootings, was the only witness to come forward with such a statement.
He also pointed out that Rico Parrish is the only one who made the claim that the video was recorded before the killing, something impossible to verify, and pointed out to the jury that in the video, Rico Parrish makes shooting motions with his arms and raps about “dropping bodies.”
And according to Porter, Rico Parrish admitted to him that he shot Woods.
Before Wednesday’s conviction, Anthony Parish could have been released in about 45 years because of Indiana’s good behavior laws, which give one day of credit for every day served. But another sentence, if ordered to be served consecutively to the other two sentences, will likely put him in prison for the rest of his life.
