Terrence “Chill” Booth escaped a second murder conviction Monday when jurors acquitted him of shooting a homeless man in the head while he slept.
It’s the third murder trial Norfolk prosecutors have lost in the past two months. Six of the past seven murder cases they’ve taken to trial have ended in acquittal.
Prosecutors accused Booth, 41, of executing Addison “Hollywood” Shearin in July 2016 while the 46-year-old homeless man slept under a gazebo in Lafayette Park.Cellphone records backed up some of Hayes’ testimony. Booth’s phone was in or near Lafayette Park between 10:45 p.m. on July 17 and 12:30 the next morning, police investigator Martin Zelada told jurors.
If the phone had been at his house a third of a mile away, as Korslund said, it would’ve pinged off a different cellphone tower.
But, Korslund said during his closing argument, prosecutors and police don’t even know when Shearin died. It might’ve been at 12:15 in the morning when the cellphone records show Booth’s phone was near the park. Or it might’ve happened at 4 a.m., when the phone was at Booth’s house on 35th Street.
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