By james art 
State prosecutors dismissed the allegations against a murder of murder on Thursday after his alleged accomplice refused to testify, an anti -clmatic ending that the District Prosecutor described as a rare end of a criminal case in Batton Rouge.
On the day of the testimony, the test of killing Chadwick Liden Alexander, Jr., reached a creaking on Wednesday when the Code and the witness of the star of the state Kevin Andre Brown were called to testify. Prosecutors planned Brown to say that Alexander shot and killed 36-year-old Joshua Roberts five years ago after luring him in the open field in Scotlandville to buy drugs. Instead, Brown refers to his fifth amendment right against self -incrimination and never took the position of witnesses.
District court judge Brad Mayers withdrew the trial until Thursday morning after Brown refused to testify, allowing state prosecutors to regroup. When the process recovered on Thursday, prosecutors rejected second -degree murder and armed charges against Alexander. He faced a compulsory life sentence if he was convicted by the jurors of nine women and five men who were sitting this week to determine his guilt or innocence.
Alexander spent nearly five years in prison in anticipation of a lawsuit. His lawyer Randy Duxe expects him to be released soon.
“There are no winners in this situation because you have a young man who has been killed,” Duxe said after the dismissal on Thursday. “So I don’t look at it as a victory, but I look at it as the justice that is being served. The evidence was not enough. I was not there to show that my man had committed these crimes or that it had something to do with it. They did not even have evidence to show that my man was present at the scene. So, in my opinion, he did not have to be accused of starting. “
Brown shook prosecutors’ efforts to prove Alexander’s guilt when he refused to confirm the jurors of the statements he gave to the police replacing Alexander as Sagittarius. It was a key indicator in which the prosecution’s case depended.
“In the light of our inability to prove beyond the sensible doubt that Chadwick Alexander committed these crimes, the state had no choice but to reject the case against him,” East District Prosecutor Batton Ruzh Hillar Moore said on Thursday. “Josh Roberts’ life was removed from him and his family on March 11, 2020. We will continue to seek justice for them.
“Fortunately, this is a rare occurrence,” Moore said.
Initially, the state intended to pursue Brown and Alexander together in a trial on the same charges. Earlier this month, Judge Mayers made Alexander’s suggestion to be tried separately and reset the Brown process to start on August 25th. Brown is still facing second -degree murder and indictments for armed robbery.
In the afternoon on March 11, 2020, police discovered that the victim was dead from a firearm to the abdomen in a 700 block on the central road, right to a picturesque highway. The shooting happened on a bicycle path near the open field, south of the Interstate 110, in the famous section of the Scotland neighborhood known as the Alleys.
When Batton Rouge police murder detectives questioned Brown, he said he and Roberts live in the same apartment complex about a mile south of the shooting. According to police reports, Brown told investigators that he had walked with Roberts to the Alleys to buy marijuana. But when they reached the Mills Avenue Blue Store parking lot, where Roberts usually met with his supplier, the dealer was not there. An unknown man in the area directed them to another drug dealer near the central road, and it was there that they met Alexander in the open field, Brown told detectives.
Brown had said as they approached Alexander to buy marijuana, Alexander pulled out a gun and asked for their money. Brown told employees that he gave up $ 5, but Roberts did not betray his money and seemed to be prepared to run when Alexander shot him.
However, police found Brown in the robbery. According to investigators, he lures the victim in the open field and called Alexander Rob Roberts of $ 140, which he plans to use to pay his landlord. When Roberts refused to hand over the money and tried to escape, Alexander shot and killed him, the authorities said.
But Alexander claims to be innocent and rejected at least three legal bids from prosecutors, his lawyer said. The most recent one came on Tuesday, during the opening spalicist of the process, when Alexander refused a deal that would limit his stay in prison to 30 years.
Duxe said prosecutors rely solely on Brown’s police statements to connect Alexander to the shooting. But he claims that all the evidence in the case shows that Brown is the killer.
“He (Alexander) has been maintained from the outset that he has not done this and has nothing to do with it. That this man just threw his name into it, “said Duxe.” The Code is the only person who involved my man in this. There is no other evidence to support the claim that my man has done this or that he is even present in a scene.