DA’s office begins to present its case in Thomas-Wilson murder trial

An Evangeline Parish jury spent last week listening to the State present its case against Reokenski Thomas and Hilton Wilson for the murder of Joseph John and the attempted murder of Derrick John.
During Assistant District Attorney Marcus Fontenot’s opening statement, he introduced the jury to the events that the State says led to Thomas and Wilson fatally wounding Joseph and their failed attempt at killing his brother Derrick.
In his opening statement, Fontenot said to the jury, “The State contends that the evidence will show that there was an argument between the victims and the accused hours before the shooting that took place on East Washington Street in Ville Platte on July 22, 2013.”
The assistant district attorney then claimed that the “evidence will show that Mr. Thomas and Mr. Wilson had access to firearms.”
Fontenot ended his opening argument with a request to the jury. He said, “Don’t get fooled by the smoke and mirrors that the defense will use to detract from the physical and eye witness evidence that the State will present to you.”
When the defense stepped up for their opportunity to begin planting seeds of doubt in the minds of the jurors, attorney Roy Richard, who is representing Hitlon Wilson, addressed the jury of 14, two of which are alternate jurors.
Richard immediately addressed Fontenot’s comment about “smoke and mirrors” by stating, “This situation seems simple if you have exact eye witnesses and exact physical evidence. There is no smoke and no mirrors. The evidence will speak for itself.”
Throughout his opening statement, Richard alluded to the idea that the evidence that the A.D.A. spoke about in his opening statement was not properly handled by investigating officers with the Ville Platte Police Department.
Richard also made it a point to inform the jury that the eye witness testimony from Derrick John was unreliable.
“Derrick made two statements about the night his brother was killed, and in his first statement he told police officers that he didn’t see who shot his brother,” said Richard. “It wasn’t until three months later that Derrick John told investigators that he saw Reokinski in the street shooting at him and his brother, but he never said that he saw my client Hilton Wilson.”
Richard ended his statement with throwing the idea out to the jury that it wasn’t Thomas or Wilson that killed Joseph.
The defense attorney made the claim that “the evidence that you hear is going to show that it was Joseph’s own brother, Derrick, that shot and killed him.”
When Reokenski Thomas’ attorney Richard Spears took his turn to address the jury, he made his opening statement short and to the point. Spears requested one thing of the jury before witnesses began to take the stand.
“The most important part of this trial is the evidence,” said Spears before he asked the jury to “please scrutinize what each witness says.”
The trial against the two Ville Platte men will continue into next week where the defense will begin to call their own witnesses to the stand in their attempt to have both Thomas and Wilson acquitted, or not found guilty of the first degree murder and attempted first degree murder charges that the State is pursuing.