Tarrant jury finds man guilty of capital murder in deaths of girlfriend, unborn twins
The lead core of the bullet that killed her fell to the passenger seat floorboard from Darionne Burley’s slouched body when she was removed from the Honda Civic.
Burley wore maternity shorts with an elastic band to make room for the babies growing inside of her.
When she was shot to death, the twin boys, at a gestational age of about 24 weeks, died too.
A jury in Criminal District Court No. 4 in Tarrant County on Monday found Maurice Smith guilty of capital murder in the deaths of Burley, who was his girlfriend, and their developing, unborn children, Twin A and Twin B. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, the penalty prescribed when, as it did in this case, the state waives the death penalty.
The indictment alleged the offense under the argument that Smith caused the death of multiple people during the same event.
The trial, over which visiting Judge Robert Brotherton presided, took place over parts of six days. The jury deliberated for about three hours and 30 minutes.
Smith and Burley grew up in Forest Hill and together attended school, perhaps in as early as sixth grade. Burley, who was 26, and Smith, then 28, had been involved in an intermittent relationship. They attended a jubilant gender reveal party in the weeks before the homicides.
Smith at times accused his girlfriend of cheating and, at least once, slapped her.
“She would always go back to Maurice,” Tarrant County Assistant District Attorney Kate Hinojosa told the jury in her opening statement.
Hinojosa prosecuted the case with Assistant District Attorney Allenna Bangs.
A police officer found Burley’s body inside the Civic in a parking lot in Mansfield.
The state built its case upon significant circumstantial evidence. The cartridge case that police collected from the Civic in which Burley was shot was fired from the gun that police found between a mattress and box-spring inside a Fort Worth apartment where Smith was seen on June 29, 2020, the day the homicides occurred, according to testimony from a firearms examiner, Mateo Serfontein, and Felicia De Leija, a Mansfield Police Department crime scene investigator who told the jury that she collected the Hi-Point pistol.
No eyewitness to the shooting testified. Smith ended an interview with detectives when the questions moved from general matters to his location on the day that the homicides occurred. Smith did not testify.
After he shot his girlfriend dead, Smith carjacked a woman in a Jeep Wrangler outside Texas State Optical in the 1600 block of N. U.S. 287 Frontage Road in Mansfield, the state alleged.
Before the killings, Smith ate a meal with Burley at a Waffle House in Fort Worth, according to surveillance video recordings from inside and outside of the restaurant that the state showed the jury.
As they left, the couple noted the air was low in a tire on the Honda. Smith said in an interview with two Mansfield Police Department detectives that he went to put air in the tire at a gas station and then to Discount Tire. Smith said that he did not want to pay for a new tire. Smith said that during an argument, Burley made him feel like less of a man when she called him a junkie, according to a recording of the interview the state showed the jury.
Smith said that after the argument he steered to the shoulder of a road, got out, jumped the fence to an apartment building, went inside and smoked K2.
The Civic’s registration led police to an apartment in Fort Worth where one of Smith’s sisters lives. Smith was at a dumpster and working to clean the carjacked Jeep. He was arrested inside an ambulance that Smith’s mother had summoned because of unusual behavior that she attributed to his illicit drug ingestion.
Police searched the apartment and found a bottle of bleach on the edge of a bathtub and a washcloth with what appeared to be blood on it. Bloody clothing was collected from the apartment in the 1000 block of Woodlands Circle.
Burley’s death was caused by one gunshot wound. The bullet entered the back of her neck and exited her nose, Dr. Richard Fries, a forensic pathologist and deputy medial examiner testified. The unborn babies’ deaths were caused when their mother’s death ended the blood and oxygen supply they needed to survive, Fries said.
A trial witness who lived at the apartment complex where Smith was arrested testified that on the day the homicides occurred a man who has a physical description similar to Smith displayed a gun and intended to carjack his vehicle, but could not use it because its battery was dead. After discovering the vehicle was disabled, the suspect offered to use his jumper cables to get it working.
“I thought this is the nicest carjacker I’ve ever met,” Marion Culton testified.
Defense attorneys Steve Gebhardt and Gary Smart were appointed to represent Smith. They argued the state had not met its reasonable doubt burden in proving Smith intentionally caused the death of the twins, an element of the offense.
“They overcharged this case. It’s a murder case,” Smart said of the state in a closing argument. Smart suggested that prosecutors may have sufficiently proved Smith’s intent to cause Burley’s death, but not the deaths of the unborn children.
The defense also appeared to attempt to get jurors to question Smith’s mental state at the time of the killings and called to testify one of the defendant’s sisters. Markessa Smith told the jury that on the day of the killings her brother smoked sherm, a marijuana blunt dipped in embalming fluid.
“My baby daddy gave it to him,” Markessa Smith testified.
The jury was instructed that voluntary intoxication does not constitute a defense to the commission of a crime.
Police did not collect Smith’s DNA for comparison testing, but such testing was not necessary, prosecutor Bangs told the jury in her closing argument, because of other compelling evidence, including testimony from Smith’s mother that she saw her son wearing boxer shorts stained by blood that a test indicated held Burley’s DNA.
“He was sitting in her blood,” Bangs said.
In June 2020, Smith was a felon with burglary and unlawful possession of a firearm convictions. He was ineligible to purchase a firearm.
On June 27, Smith attempted to buy a gun and was rejected during a background check.
The next day he asked a friend, Deonte Sneed, to do him a favor and apply for and purchase a Hi-Point pistol.
Sneed agreed and went with his two children, Smith and Burley to a gun show at Will Rogers Auditorium. Sneed did not ask why he needed to be involved in the purchase and had no idea what Smith was going to do with the gun, Sneed testified.
A purchase under the circumstances that Sneed described is a federal crime. Sneed testified that he hopes to benefit from his trial testimony. The U.S. Attorney’s Office has not promised his statements to the jury would affect its charging decision.
Sneed’s former girlfriend is one of Burley’s sisters.
On Smith’s behalf, Burley gave Sneed about $250 to pay for the pistol that Smith used to kill her the following afternoon.
The couple walked together down an aisle of table displays as they left the show. With one hand, Smith held a bag that contained the gun.
His other arm was on his pregnant girlfriend.
This story was originally published March 4, 2024 at 11:21 AM.
