From the US Attorney’s Office:
District Man Sentenced to 42 Years in Prison In 2010 Killing of Teenager During Robbery - Defendant Opened Fire After Going Through Victim’s Pockets -
WASHINGTON - Reginald Rogers, 20, of Washington, D.C., was sentenced today to 42 years in prison on charges stemming from the slaying of a teenager in Southeast Washington, U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. announced.
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We’ve been in a development sprint here at Homicide Watch and I’d like to introduce you to two new features on the site.
This weekend we debuted Case Tracking, allowing you to check, at a glance, whether a suspect is suspected, has pled guilty, or has been convicted by jury. You’ll find this information on each suspect’s page below their name and biographic details. For example, Deon Eugene Thornton’s page now says “pled guilty in the death of Derrick Phillip Thornton Jr. on Feb. 11, 2011.”
Are you interested in seeing who else has pled guilty in Homicide Watch DC’s database? Click “pled guilty” on Thornton’s page for a full listing. The same works for “suspected” and “convicted by jury.” Or check these pages:
We’ve also added more ways for you to stay up-to-date on the cases you’re interested in. Now follow individual victims and suspects pages by clicking the orange “subscribe” button below the name and biography field (it’s right below the Tweet and Facebook share buttons).
You can still sign-up for our daily email, too. Enter your email address in the “Subscribe” field of the blue sidebar on the homepage. We promise not to share your email address with anyone.
Thanks for your support of Homicide Watch D.C. If you like these features, or find our reporting important and compelling, help us continue to build the site and report these stories by making a donation in any amount. The money raised helps pay for these efforts. You can click the yellow “donate” button on the homepage (next to subscribe) to make a secure Paypal donation to our efforts.
On the afternoon of Dec. 30, I was sitting in D.C. Metropolitan Police Department’s (MPD) command center with more than a dozen other journalists waiting for Chief Cathy Lanier and Mayor Vincent Gray to arrive. They had called the New Year’s Eve eve press conference to talk about the year in crime and policing, and, in part, to talk about MPD’s incredible 94 percent homicide case closure in 2011.
I knew that nowhere near 94 percent of 2011′s homicides listed in the Homicide Watch database were closed. I pulled up the site and did a quick check to make sure. According to our data, 61 of 108 homicides — or 56 percent — had been closed with an arrest.
When I checked with Lanier later that afternoon, I learned that the case-closure arithmetic MPD was using included the closures of homicides from previous years in the calculation of the 2011 calendar year’s closure rate. It was math that conformed to federal guidelines, but not math that I thought the public understood. To help, I wrote a quick post in our Year in Review package explaining the much-repeated case closure rate.
On Feb. 18, the Washington Post followed that explainer piece with an in-depth investigative feature headlined “The trick to D.C. police force’s 94% closure rate for 2011 homicides.”
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A D.C. Superior Court Judge today scheduled a status hearing in the case of Zachary Sims, a 18-year-old accused of shooting 16-year-old Jamal Bell to death after a graduation party last June.
Sims’ attorney said that David Weston, who was killed in Sept. 2010, made “admissions” regarding the case to at least two other people.
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This guest post is from India Rice, whose brother, Quintin T. Perry Jr., was killed Dec. 25 in Oxon Hill.
Quintin T. Perry Jr.
12/8/88-12/25/11
A native Washingtonian, 23-year-old Quintin T. Perry Jr was a devoted brother, son, friend, and father. At the time of his death, Quintin was working towards a GED and a stable career in culinary as he was a very talented cook with deep roots in the culinary field.
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From the US Attorney’s Office:
District Man Sentenced to 20 Years in Prison In 2010 Slaying in Southeast Washington - Shooting Followed a Confrontation in a Parking Lot -
WASHINGTON - Katrell Henry, 37, of Washington, D.C., was sentenced today to 20 years in prison on charges stemming from the slaying last year of a man in Southeast Washington, U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. announced.
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Eric Foreman’s trial for felony murder has been rescheduled from February to August.
Foreman, 18, is charged in the August 2010 shooting death of Catholic University graduate student Neil Godleski. Godleski was bicycling home from his job as a waiter at a restaurant when Foreman allegedly robbed him for $60 at gunpoint in Sherman Circle. Godleski was shot several times in the course of the robbery.
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The jury charged with determining the guilt and innocence of five D.C. men charged in a series of shootings known as the “South Capitol Street Massacre” heard opening statements today, the first day of presentations.
The defendants: Orlando Carter, 22; Sanquan, 21; Jeffrey D. Best, 23; Robert Bost, 23; and Lamar Williams, 23, are charged with participating in shootings that killed five young people and injured nine more.
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The Washington Post advances a story first reported by Homicide Watch DC in December: The 94 percent case closure rate frequently cited by Police Chief Cathy Lanier, Mayor Vincent Gray and others hides more complicated arithmetic.
The closure rate she presents for the District is 154 percent higher than Boston’s and at least 104 percent higher than Baltimore’s, and it gives residents reason to believe that D.C. police have been remarkably successful at solving homicide cases under her watch.
But an examination of District homicides found that the department’s closure rate is a statistical mishmash that makes things seem much better than they are. The District had 108 homicides last year, police records show. A 94 percent closure rate would mean that detectives solved 102 of them. But only 62 were solved as of year’s end, for a true closure rate of 57 percent, according to records reviewed by The Post.
Lawrence Davis was sentenced this morning to 45 years in prison for the stabbing death of his wife, Elizabeth Singleton almost 13 years ago.
Davis says he is innocent and his attorney said Friday that Davis intends to appeal the court’s first-degree murder while armed conviction.
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