Prosecutors have dropped charges against murder suspect Ray Allen Dicks, freeing Dicks after 11 months in DC jail.
Judge William Jackson signed an order releasing Dicks Oct. 19; ten months earlier Jackson had found “substantial probability” in the case against the 22-year-old.
Dicks was accused of killing 24-year-old Eric Dionte Kearney, shooting him multiple times on Oct. 17, 2011, near Truxton Circle. In an indictment, Dicks was charged with first-degree murder while armed and three weapons violations.
Kearney was found shot near the 1600 block of Lincoln Road Northeast at about 8:18 p.m. Oct. 17, 2011, when officers responded to a call for reports of gunshots. A subsequent investigation led them to Dicks.
Dicks had been identified by a witness, according to an arrest warrant issued for him last year. Officers later spoke with multiple inmates at DC jail who told officers they overheard conversations identifying Dicks as the shooter.
Prosecutors thought the conversations showed that Dicks targeted Kearney, also known as Tay, because Kearney accused another man of being a police informant in his brother’s, Kwan Kearney‘s, case.
Charging documents in the case allege that Dicks shot at Eric Kearney because he had heard that Eric Kearney was saying that when the alleged “snitch” in Kwan Kearney’s case was released from jail and came home, that he shouldn’t “come to the block.”
“Tay is going around telling everybody I’m snitching on Kwan’s case,” a man identified as “Witness 5” told homicide investigators.
“I handled that Tay situation,” Dicks told Witness 5, while visiting DC Jail last month, another inmate told investigators.
Kwan Kearney was later convicted in the two murder cases he was charged in.
Officers from the Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force arrested Dicks Nov. 15, 2011.
At a preliminary hearing, Dicks’ attorney, Renee Raymond, suggested that Dicks could not have shot Kearney because he was enrolled in a class that met at the same time that the shooting took place.
Detective Sean Caine, who testified at the preliminary hearing, said that when he was questioned about the shooting he told detectives that he was in class when Kearney was killed. Attendance records indicate that he was signed in to Fortis College in Landover, Md. for a class from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. that night, Caine said. A test related to a medical technician’s degree was administered in that class period and a test with Dicks’ name on it was presented to the court.
Raymond was not available for comment this week.
