LINCOLN — The Nebraska Supreme Court on Friday upheld an Omaha man’s conviction and life sentence for shooting and killing a Lincoln man in his home in 2021 in a failed attempt to rob him of 4 pounds of marijuana.
Deontae Rush was found guilty of the first-degree murder of James Shekie at a jury trial in November 2022.
District Judge Kevin McManaman sentenced Rush to life, plus 25 to 35 years in prison for use of a deadly weapon to commit a felony.
At trial, Rush took the stand and said he “had nothing to do with this,” referring to the morning shooting in Lincoln on Feb. 23, 2021.
Deontae Rush, left, and his lawyer Jeff Pickens listen to testimony during his first murder trial in 2022.
JUSTIN WAN, LINCOLN JOURNAL STAR
His co-defendants, Anna Feilen and her brother, Marques Moten, testified against him, telling jurors that they waited in the van as Rush kicked in the door at Shekie’s mobile home at Mark IV Estates near North 20th and Superior streets.
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They heard three gunshots soon after, then Shekie’s screams, and drove off, picking up Rush soon after emptyhanded at a nearby FedEx when he called Moten.
Police found Shekie’s body March 1, 2021, after a neighbor called because Shekie’s door had been left open for three days.
He’d been dead for nearly a week.
On March 8, 2021, Rush was arrested in Chicago, where he’d fled.
Shekie
Security footage at a Lincoln apartment shortly before the shooting showed Feilen, Moten and a third person in a hoodie with the same build as Rush at a Lincoln apartment complex.
And records put Rush’s cellphone in Lincoln.
On appeal, Rush’s new attorneys argued, among other things, that Rush should have been granted a mistrial for prosecutorial misconduct during closing arguments and over his attorney failing to “adequately pursue” an alibi defense.
Due to a court error, a subpoena for a law enforcement officer who took the report of a domestic assault, which Rush contended provided him an alibi for the murder, wasn’t served.
And in his closing argument, the prosecutor said there was nothing to corroborate Rush’s testimony that he he had gone to Chicago because a warrant was out for his arrest for domestic assault, though he knew that the warrant existed.
In Friday’s decision, Supreme Court Justice John Freudenberg said “viewed in their entirety and in context, the prosecutor’s closing arguments did not dispute that there was a warrant related to the domestic assault or even that the domestic assault happened. Rather, the prosecutor disputed whether the domestic assault happened ‘at the same time that this murder occurred.'”
The court also found no merit to the claim that Rush’s trial counsel had been ineffective for not fighting a mistrial being called at his first trial three months earlier due to delays over a spate of COVID-19 infections.
Freudenberg said Rush had sufficiently raised a claim regarding the failure to call a witness to testify about the domestic assault and when it occurred, but that could not be determined on direct appeal.
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Publish date : 2024-09-21 02:00:00
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