Sept. 26, 2008 — It took a jury only three hours Friday night to find 20-year-old Akeel Codrington guilty of first-degree murder for the October 2007 shooting death of St. Thomas architect Carlos Aguilar.
The trial started Wednesday and wrapped up around 3:30 p.m. Friday with closing arguments. Jury deliberations started around 6 p.m. and finished shortly thereafter, with the panel of 10 women and two men convicting Codrington on all three charges, which also include possession of an unlawful firearm during the commission of first-degree murder and possession of stolen property.
Codrington's sentencing is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Nov. 10. A first-degree murder conviction, according to local law, carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The jury's quick decision came as a big surprise to Aguilar's wife, Verian Aguilar, who was a fixture in the courtroom — or outside in the V.I. Superior Court hallway — for the entire trial, supported by many family members and friends.
"I'm in shock," she said after the verdict came down. "It's not going to change what we'd like to change, but I think that I am so proud of the justice system and the jurors, and I feel for his (Codrington's) family. I never expected this. I just learned so much about people through this whole process, and there are some incredibly great people out there, from the witnesses to everybody in the whole court system. The professionalism — I've never been through that process before, and it was incredible."
Emotions ran high in the courtroom Friday as government attorneys repeatedly broke down the events leading up the Aguilar's death during closing arguments. Friends and family members continuously wiped tears from their eyes as Assistant Attorney General Nolan Paige described how Codrington fired one shot into Aguilar's silver SUV, then turned, walked a few feet away, came back and fired another shot into the car at close range.
The second shot, Paige said, spelled murder.
"Mr. Codrington had malice and forethought — he deliberately and with premeditation shot and killed Mr. Aguilar," Paige said. "He willed it to happen. There were two shots — if that isn't willful, I don't know what is. The defense says Mr. Aguilar was exercising vigilante justice. Well, I think killing somebody because they cause an accident is vigilante justice."
The shooting occurred last October, after Aguilar and his wife responded to an alarm at their Smith Bay home, which had just been burglarized. Aguilar reportedly saw a red Mitsubishi auto leaving the area and gave chase, colliding with it on Smith Bay Road. Eyewitnesses to the incident — many of whom testified during the trial — said they saw Codrington exit the driver's side of the red car, gun in hand, and fire two shots into Aguilar's vehicle.
Two of the witnesses were passengers aboard two different taxi vans that had been touring the area when the shooting occurred. Another was a taxi driver, who was caught in traffic at the top of the hill. The driver said on the stand Thursday that Codrington approached his vehicle after shooting Aguilar and asked him to "step down."
After being refused, Codrington tried another vehicle, then ran down the hill in the opposite direction, the driver said.
Two other witnesses — Steve Ramsey and Brian Russell, two safari passengers from the mainland — also pointed to Codrington as the shooter. Another, a police detective who knew Codrington while he was a student at Ivanna Eudora Kean High School, said he was on his way to the crime scene when he saw Codrington walking down the road in the opposite direction, toward the Wyndham Sugar Bay Resort.
"Three men who didn't know each other, from three different parts of the world — all were presented photo arrays with six different people in them," Paige told the jury Friday. "Ask yourself if this is a coincidence: They all picked picture No. 5 — Akeel Codrington."
But there was another person traveling with Codrington that day — a passenger described by witnesses as having similar features and wearing similar clothing, countered Codrington's defense attorney Julie Todman.
Todman argued that the prosecution's witnesses "misidentified" Codrington and did not initially provide investigators with a full description of the shooter, but instead said he was a black male wearing a white T-shirt and dark pants. No one described the shape of the shooter's face or his hairstyle until they were interviewed again months later and more details were provided, she said.
At issue for Todman were statements by witnesses that the shooter had long or nearly shoulder-length hair and was clean-shaven. Codrington's hair is always kept short, and on the day of the shooting he had a beard, mustache and sideburns — as evidenced by the picture of him contained in the photo array used by investigators, she said.
"Any black man won't do," Todman said to the jury. "And that was basically the description given by the witnesses. Simply saying that the person is black is not good enough — none of the government's witnesses gave a description of the defendants."
Witnesses also never saw the red car enter the Aguilar's driveway, Todman argued. The vehicle, which was on loan from one of Codrington's friends, was also severely damaged after Aguilar intentionally collided with it, she added.
"Mr. Aguilar rear-ended the vehicle, sideswiped it, cut it off, causing it to lose control and slam into the wall," Todman said, making a plea for voluntary manslaughter. "That is the action of someone who is enraged — the action of road rage. A car can in fact be a deadly weapon, and Mr. Carlos Aguilar used his SUV as a deadly weapon."
Codrington has consistently denied killing Aguilar. In a statement given to police the day after the incident, Codrington said that he was the driver of the red car, and had stopped along Smith Bay Road to pick up a passenger who had offered him $30 for a ride to Red Hook. The passenger — who Codrington said was wearing all black — stowed a black garbage bag, containing a 20-inch television and other items, in the trunk of the car. After the collision, Codrington said he saw the passenger get out of the vehicle and heard two shots fired, then ran off in the opposite direction.
The Aguilars' stolen goods were recovered, but there was no sign of the garbage bag or the "rogue man in black," Paige said Friday.
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