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Elusive shooting witnesses kill case

Prosecutors drop the charge against a defendant in a fatal shooting after a judge refuses another delay.

By CHRIS TISCH
Published February 2, 2005

LARGO - Phillippee Abrams messed with the wrong men.

On a winter night in 2003, Abrams got a gun, pulled on a ski mask and tossed a battery through the window of a St. Petersburg drug house. When a man stepped outside, Abrams forced him back in at gunpoint and demanded the stash and cash.

But there were two more men inside the house that night. They wrested the gun away from Abrams, beat him with Belvedere vodka bottles, then shot him in the leg.

Abrams was subdued.

Police say one of the men, Jovante Thomas, then shot Abrams in the heart. Prosecutors charged Thomas with unnecessarily killing someone while preventing a criminal act, a second-degree felony that could have put Thomas in prison for 15 years.

Instead, it appears no one will answer for Abrams' death.

On Tuesday, prosecutors had to drop the charge because the other two men in the house that night have dodged subpoenas requiring them to testify. The men, Maurice Lovett, 24, and Dante Payne, 29, gave statements to police after the shooting but have since gone underground.

Investigators have spent at least six weeks searching daily for the pair, and believe they are somewhere in St. Petersburg.

The men changed addresses faster than some people change socks. When investigators learned where they were staying, the men darted out back doors, refused to answer knocks or told family members to lie about their whereabouts, prosecutors said.

A Pinellas-Pasco circuit judge twice agreed to delay Thomas' trial while prosecutors searched. But Tuesday, Judge Brandt Downey said he could wait no more. He denied prosecutors' motion to delay the trial again.

With no other evidence to go on, prosecutor Frank Piazza announced he was dropping the charge.

"The witnesses wouldn't show," Piazza said outside the courtroom. "It's frustrating when someone has died."

Prosecutors aren't certain why Lovett and Payne made themselves scarce, but they wonder if Thomas, 23, threatened them. He was released after posting bail after his December 2003 arrest, though he was rearrested on a domestic battery charge in September and remained in jail Tuesday in lieu of $5,000 bail.

Even if prosecutors found Lovett and Payne today, they could not charge Thomas with the crime again. Lovett and Payne wouldn't face charges either because "we could never put the subpoenas in their hands," prosecutor Stephen O'Keefe said.

Had investigators cornered them somewhere and served the subpoenas, a judge could have ordered their arrests for failing to show at trial.

Reluctant witnesses are a part of the criminal justice system, particularly when those people are scared or involved in criminal activity themselves.

But usually in homicide cases, investigators turn up the heat on witness searches to ensure they all show up for court.

"The people we're dealing with generally are not Boy Scouts," said Sgt. Mike Puetz of the St. Petersburg police homicide unit. "This wouldn't be the first case where we've had to look high and low for people and try to find them the day of the show and get them down there."

Prosecutors said they did turn up the heat but just couldn't find the two, which O'Keefe said is rare.

The house where the shooting occurred, 6551/2 Preston Ave. S, was a known drug house. It was even equipped with cameras at the front door so the dealers inside could see who approached. Sales occurred in the back, O'Keefe said.

In interviews with police, Payne and Lovett said Abrams was subdued when Thomas fired into his chest. Thomas claimed Abrams lunged at him, but O'Keefe said that seems unlikely considering the beaten man's injuries.

"He just executed that guy because he wanted to," O'Keefe said.

Even with brutal crimes, judges cannot keep charges pending indefinitely. If key witnesses can't be found, a judge has to set a deadline, said Nick Cox, a professor at the Stetson University College of Law and former prosecutor.

"The judge has to worry about the defendant's rights, too," he said.

The dropped charges were good news to Thomas' sister, Jamisha Thomas.

"He's not a murderer. That he is not," she said. "If there's no witnesses, there's no case."

Relatives of Abrams, who is from Georgia, could not be reached Tuesday.

"We try to do the right thing but sometimes it's hard to do the right thing when people in the community don't do their part," O'Keefe said.

[Last modified February 2, 2005, 00:31:09]