“There is no proper reason to not tell you what the damned results are,” said Rounds told the jury. “It’s unforgivable, it’s outrageous.”
Jurors were not allowed to hear testimony about Keith’s alleged gang affiliation or prior criminal record. Indeed, when Van Loan asked Kingston detective Eric Van Allen to describe his training in gang and narcotics investigations on the witness stand, county court judge Donald Williams ordered the jury out of the courtroom and issued a strong rebuke to the ADA, saying that he would not tolerate “gamesmanship” by either side.
“It wasn’t for a lack of trying,” said Rounds of the prosecution’s efforts to introduce evidence of gang involvement. “They would have loved to have gotten the gang stuff in there, but it was totally irrelevant.”
Thus, jurors did not hear that Keith spent two and a half years in state prison on a narcotics charge. Less than two weeks after he was released in December 2010, police believe Keith attended a New Year’s Eve party hosted by the Street Cannibals motorcycle club at an illegal social club set up inside a converted factory building on O’Neil Street. A melee broke out in the early morning hours of January 1, 2011, and when it was over three bikers had been shot and wounded, and another club member, a woman, was left with a skull fracture from a pistol butt.
Police believe Keith wielded the pistol. He was arrested a few days later and jailed without bail. By mid-April 2011, however, Keith was back on the street after a key witness against him stopped cooperating with the investigation while others started backing off statements made to police immediately after the shooting. Without enough evidence to win an indictment on felony charges, prosecutors opted to transfer the case to city court for prosecution as a misdemeanor assault. The status of that case remains unclear.
District Attorney Holley Carnright described the case against Keith as “tough,” with scant physical evidence and a star witness whose participation in the crime made her testimony a tough sell for a jury. But Kingston detective sergeant Brian Robertson praised Carnright for pushing ahead with the prosecution. “It was a really tough case to go trial on, and the DA’s office didn’t balk,” said Robertson. “You have to give them credit for that.”
