Jurors reject self-defense plea in killing
CIRCLEVILLE — Justin Blevins said he shot a 16-yearold to death in June because they were locked in a ferocious fight, a kill-or-be-killed scenario, a him-or-me moment.
But prosecutors said the evidence showed Blevins shot Samuel “Sammy” Nicholson II
at least 10 times — so many bullet holes that a county coroner couldn’t get an exact count — because Blevins owed Nicholson $700 for marijuana and didn’t have the money.
A Pickaway County Common Pleas Court jury found Blevins guilty Wednesday night of aggravated murder and all other charges against him after about five hours of deliberations. The trial began Monday.
Blevins, 19, cried as the verdicts were read. Judge P. Randall Knece did not set a date for sentencing.
State and local police investigators testified that they were called about 5:30 a.m. June 11 to a Jefferson Street apartment in the Pickaway County village of Ashville on a report of a break-in. They found the apartment a mess, with broken furniture and ransacked cabinets, and with blood on the floor, the couch and a tossed-about chair cushion. There were obvious signs of a fight and struggle. Detectives also described finding a bag of marijuana in a kitchen cupboard and more marijuana and about $1,300 in a safe.
Nicholson was found dead on the floor, shot at least three times in the head and three times in the chest, back and arms. Nearby was a .40-caliber Daewoo semi-automatic pistol and a hatchet.
Prosecutor Judy Wolford told jurors Nicholson had been selling marijuana in Ashville and had fronted some pot to Blevins, who lived outside of the village. She said text and Facebook messages showed that the two had been bickering over the money and that Nicholson had offered Blevins the chance to help him out on a carpentry project as a way to resolve the debt.
“But the defendant didn’t try to work it out,” Wolford said. Instead, he went to the apartment where Nicholson had been staying and executed him.
“Now, you may not think drug dealing is a good thing,” Wolford told jurors, “but I don’t think there’s any 16-year-old who deserves to be shot to death because of it.”
Darrell Arnett, who rented the apartment, told jurors he “took Sammy off the streets” and gave him a place to live. Arnett said he was asleep upstairs that morning when he was awakened by gunshots. When questioned by police later that day, Arnett told detectives he grabbed the hatchet and ran downstairs after hearing the gunshots. He said he and Blevins, whom Arnett said he hadn’t known was in the apartment, fought viciously.
The evidence against Blevins included his DNA found underneath Arnett’s fingernails.
Blevins testified on Tuesday, saying he’d been invited into the house that night and had shot Nicholson in selfdefense because Nicholson had a gun on him, too. Police said there was no evidence to support that.
Nicholson’s mother, Jennifer Castle, sat in the front of the courtroom and cried through most of the trial. She carried with her a photo of her son smiling in a smart black and white suit.
She’d captioned it: “We miss u and we will get justice for u. We sure do miss and love u Sammy but we know ur dancing in the sky.”