Jury rejects capital murder for girl state alleged was bait in Fort Worth robbery-killing
In the prosecutors’ telling, the petite 14-year-old girl was the ideal bait to put at ease a man who was to be robbed.
She was with the target inside his car. It had been her assignment to get the Hyundai Elantra and marijuana dealer Kevion Lenear to a spot on a street near an alley in Fort Worth close to its border with River Oaks.
When Lenear was in a position from which he would not be able to see what was coming and when the time was otherwise right to approach, the girl was to alert via text message others with whom she had plotted and who were waiting to emerge from behind a utility box, according to an account offered by the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office at a trial that ended last week.
Lenear, 21, and an armed participant in the robbery were shot to death during a February 2022 fusillade in which the girl conspired with four other teenagers to rob Lenear, prosecutors alleged.
The 14-year-old was, in the simplest of understandings, “in” on the robbery, prosecutors alleged. Her precise intent was a central legal question at trial.
Prosecutors’ assertion that the girl, who is now 16, intended to cause Lenear’s death formed the underpinning of the district attorney’s office assessment that the girl was, as a party, delinquent in a commission of capital murder.
The jury at the trial in 323rd District Court in Tarrant County on Friday found the girl, known in juvenile legal matters as a respondent, not delinquent of capital murder, two rationales of murder and two rationales of aggravated robbery.
The panel, which deliberated for about five hours, found the respondent delinquent on the felony murder rationale that holds that she was a party to a robbery and in its commission was a party to Lenear’s shooting death.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram does not publish the name of a minor who is accused or found delinquent of an offense as a juvenile.
Prosecutors alleged that the respondent was a party to a robbery just before sunrise on Feb. 9, 2022, in the 1900 block of Lawther Drive.
They alleged that it was her job to get Lenear in position to be robbed. Lenear’s car, in which he, the respondent and her older sister sat, arrived at 6:48 a.m., according to a police-corrected time indicated on a surveillance video camera recording.
Nine minutes later, Lenear would be on the street next to his car, his right chest cavity filling with blood, ejected cartridge casings scattered about.
Three people, two male juveniles and an adult, Christian Armijo, had walked from behind a utility container. Armijo held an AR-style rifle, and one of the juveniles held a handgun. Two of the assailants wore ski masks.
A person who is 18 and was 16 when the shooting deaths occurred, testified on Thursday that Armijo walked to the car and opened a rear door. Armijo, 18, was the mastermind of the robbery, prosecutors argued.
Lenear, 21, who held a handgun, fired the first rounds, and Armijo was shot, the witness testified.
“Is this Chris’ rifle?” Tarrant County Assistant Criminal District Attorney Kyle Morris asked the juvenile witness as the prosecutor held a box containing a weapon.
“Yes, sir,” the witness answered.
“Is that his blood on it?” Morris asked.
The witness testified that he could not see blood. Photos displayed earlier for the jury indicated it was stained red.
The juvenile witness testified that after Lenear began to shoot, the witness opened fire with a .380-caliber handgun and fired the round that killed Lenear. Jurors were shown autopsy photographs of two bullet holes in his back.
Armijo was hit by rounds Lenear fired and died at a hospital.
The assailants had not, before the robbery began, intended to shoot Lenear but the juvenile trial witness testified that he did when Lenear opened fire.
The witness in October pleaded true to murder in an arrangement with the district attorney’s office in which it dismissed other offenses, including capital murder.
Bob Gill, an attorney who represents the respondent, suggested in his closing argument that a flawed prosecutorial approach improperly imperiled his client, particularly when considering the district attorney’s office plea deal with the co-respondent surviving shooter.
“Why are they trying to convict her of capital murder?” Gill asked. “Where is the fairness in that?”
A person commits capital murder if the person intentionally causes the death of an individual and the person intentionally commits the murder in the course of committing or attempting to commit robbery, the jury was instructed.
Gill represents the respondent with Miles Brissette.
The boy who testified that he shot Lenear also testified that he participated with the respondent in a robbery attempt under circumstances similar to the Lenear robbery one day before it.
Prosecutors agreed to provide to the juvenile immunity from prosecution on that unreported robbery in exchange for his truthful testimony on it. The immunity agreement applies without regard to the verdict in the trial of the respondent.
Gill suggested to the jury that the entirety of juvenile’s testimony was self-serving and perhaps motivated by an expectation he may receive a parole recommendation from prosecutors at a transfer hearing in which a judge will determine, when he is 19, whether he will continue his 25-year sentence in an adult prison or under parole supervision.
Gill told jurors his client’s intent was critical to their conclusions, and indeed the jury’s verdict appeared, at least in part, to be grounded in that argument.
With Morris, Tarrant County Assistant Criminal District Attorney Lee Sorrells prosecuted the respondent.
In his closing, Morris argued the respondent was an active participant in a well-executed, if criminal, plan.
“[The respondent] today is what she was then,” Morris said. “She’s small. She’s young. She does not look like a threat.”
She was, Morris argued, the perfect lure.
Fort Worth police Homicide Unit Detective Matt Anderson testified that swabs of elements of evidence were taken but not tested for DNA because other evidence in the case was sufficient to create a clear picture of the circumstances and suspects.
Other detectives reviewed information from a cellphone they said they found outside Lenear’s car. Prosecutors suggested the cellphone contained Snapchat and text messages the respondent sent as a robbery participant, although the author of the messages was in dispute at trial.
“ok. kome. we in the back,” the respondent wrote in text messages just before the robbery, prosecutors told the jury.
Police found the rifle and handgun in a bedroom of another juvenile who was present during the robbery. The room is in a house within walking distance of the homicide scene. The juvenile, who did not possess a gun during the robbery, was found delinquent of capital murder at a trial last year. A disposition hearing has not been held.
Jacqueline Campos, then 17 and now 18, is also accused of being inside Lenear’s car before the robbery. She was grazed in the shooting. Campos was indicted as an adult on capital murder in a case that is unresolved in 213th District Court.
Judge Alex Kim presided at the trial, which included the impromptu jolt into service of Frank Adler, a lawyer who was observing the trial from the gallery. Adler was appointed when it became clear a prospective witness who would testify outside the presence of the jury that, a day before the homicides, he was a victim of a robbery involving the respondent needed to be represented by a lawyer uninvolved in the case.
After the verdict, first indicated by a jury room buzzer that rumbled through the Kimbo Road courthouse, Morris argued unsuccessfully that the respondent should be detained until a disposition hearing at which Kim, after reviewing a social history report, will determine the adult court equivalent of a sentence.
Kim ordered that the respondent continue to be monitored by the county juvenile probation department.
This story was originally published April 22, 2023 at 5:30 PM.
