IN THE

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE
WESTERN DISTRICT OF VIRGINIA
DANVILLE DIVISION

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA )

)
v. ) Criminal No. 4:18-CR-00011
)
MARCUS JAY DAVIS, et al )
)

NOTICE OF FILING OF AFFIDAVIT IN RESPONSE

TO QUESTIONS RAISED BY THE COURT ON OCTOBER 18, 2019

Comes now the United States of America and provides this Notice of Filing of Affidavit in

Response to Questions Raised by the Court on October 18, 2019, as well as relevant exhibits (filed

under seal), in response to certain questions raised by the Court at the status hearing held in this

matter on October 17, 2019.

Respectfully submitted,

THOMAS T. CULLEN
UNITED STATES ATTORNEY

/s/Ronald M. Huber
Heather L. Carlton
Ronald M. Huber
Assistant United States Attorneys
United States Attorney’s Office
255 West Main Street
Charlottesville, Virginia 22902
Tel: (434) 293-4283
Fax: (434) 293-4910
heather.carlton@usdoj.gov
ron.huber@usdoj.gov

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 CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE

I hereby certify that a true and correct copy of the foregoing Notice has been provided

via electronic means via the Court’s CM/ECF filing system to counsel of record, this 18th day of

October, 2019.

/s/Ronald M. Huber
Assistant United States Attorney

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 AFFIDAVIT OF MICHAEL J. NEWMAN

I hereby depose and state as follows:

1. My name is Michael J. Newman, and I am the Commonwealth's Attorney for the
City of Danville, Virginia. I have served in this role from 2010 up through the present.

2. In my role as Commonwealth's Attorney, I joined the prosecution team in the

case United States v. Davis, et al., case number 4:18-cr-00011, as a Special Assistant United
States Attorney. I joined the team in or about 2017 .

Multi-Jurisdictional Grand Jury

3. In 2015, the Commonwealth's Attomey for Pittsylvania County, Brian Haskins,

and I petitioned the Supreme Court of Virginia to extend a previously empaneled multi-
jurisdictional state grand jury to investigate alleged criminal violations, as specified in Section
19.2-215.1 of the Code of Virginia in our respective counties (the "MJGJ"). This MJGJ
continued until it expired in January 2016. A new MJGJ was similarly convened by petitioning
the Supreme Court in August 2016. The new MJGJ continued until February 2018. (The orders
beginning and extending the MJGJs are collectively attached hereto as Exhibit One.)r The case
at bar was indicted on June 11, 2018.

4. While the Virginia MJGJ statute provides broad authority to investigate alleged
criminal violations contained in the relevant code sectiotr, ffiy purpose in seeking to convene the
MJGJs was to investigate the violent crime in and around the City of Danville during the relevant
time period.

5. Once the MJGJ was convened, it issued subpoenas for witnesses to appear before
the respective MJGJs. Certain of those witnesses did not appear. Others of those witnesses
appeared, but were questioned by law enforcement officers outside the MJGJ and did not testifii.
Still other witnesses went in the MJGJ and testified.

6. Other than keeping a copy of the subpoenas that were issued in a file, my office
did not keep a list or record of witnesses that were subpoenaed to the MJGJ, nor did we keep a
record of the witnesses' statuses. In other words, we did not document whether a witness
appeared, was interviewed, or testified.

I The Exhibits in this Affidavit are being filed under seal.

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 7. In the last two days, I have gone back through the actual subpoenas issued by the
MJGJ in an attempt to create a list of what witnesses were subpoenaed and whether they
testified. (The list is attached hereto as Exhibit Two.) The portion of the list that indicates
whether individuals testified or were interviewed or did not appear is based upon my recollection
and review and comparison of the subpoenas to the recordings. The list of who appeared and
was interviewed (and did not testify) versus who did not appear at all is incomplete, but I am still
attempting to compile additional information for it.

8. Specifically, Ashley Ross was subpoenaed as a witness to appear before the

MJGJ. That subpoena was issued on October 3l , 2017 for her appearance on Novemb er 9 , 2017 .
(A copy of the subpoena is attached hereto as Exhibit Three.) Ms. Ross was interviewed by
police and did not testify before the MJGJ. A video recording of that interview has been
provided in discovery to defense counsel in this case.

9. At the MJGJ, recordings are made of all testimony. However, many of these
recordings have not been transcribed.

10. The federal prosecution team and I were aware that Lashonda Washington and
Ontwoinette Epperson had both appeared before the MJGJ in 2017. I provided the transcripts of
these witnesses' testimony to the prosecution team. It was believed that these transcripts were
produced in discovery in advance of the discovery deadline in this case. The prosecution team
learned the night of October 15,2019 that it had mistakenly not done so. The prosecution team
produced those transcripts to defense counsel on the morning of October 16,2019. The
prosecution team had previously disclosed copies of the federal grand jury transcripts of these
witnesses.

11. At a hearing before the Court in this case on October 16,2019, AUSA Heather
Carlton stated to the Court that there were no more relevant transcripts other than the
Washington and Epperson transcripts based on information I provided to her.

12. After that hearing, I contacted my office to get a list of names of other individuals
who had appeared before the MJGJ. At this time, I learned and also recalled that Tenikqua
Fuller, Laquante Adams, Brian Crutchfield, and others had testified before the MJGJ. On the
evening of October 16,2019, following court proceedings,I drove to my Danville office and met
with a state court reporter and obtained transcripts of witness Crutchfield's MJGJ grand jury
testimony. I also listened to portions of recordings of grand jury testimony of Adams, Fuller,
and Wydarius Brandon. As to Adams' testimony, I listened to enough of the recording to
determine he discussed gang activity, but did not listen to the full recording to determine if he
specifically referenced individuals in this case nor their affiliations with certain gangs. This is
the information I relayed to the prosecution team. Following this, I requested the court reporter
transcribe the MJGJ testimony of Adams and Wydarius Brandon. That evening, I alerted the
federal prosecution team for the first time about these additional witnesses. I did not previously

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 disclose this material because these witnesses were called as a part of the MJGJ, and I
mistakenly believed they were focused on investigations irrelevant to the instant case.

13. I then brought the recordings (and a media player) of the testimony for Marcus
Skipwith and Fuller to Roanoke and produced them to the US Attorney's Office on the morning
of October 17 ,2019, so that they could be transcribed.

14. As I was pulling the MJGJ tapes on October 16,2019,Irealizedthat Courtney

Davis testified the same day as Adams. I am familiar Courtney Davis as a convicted drug dealer.
This caused me to remember that his testimony may have delved into gang activity.

15. My summary of the MJGJ testimony led to the email AUSA Ron Huber sent
defense counsel on October 17,2019, at 12:10 p.m., listing what MJGJ witnesses the prosecution
team believed was or may have arguably been related to the instant prosecution. After that email
was sent, I notified the prosecution team about Courtney Davis. After the hearing, the
prosecution team received the Courtney Davis transcript and produced it later that night. I did
not previously tell the prosecution team about this witness for similar reasons as stated in prior
paragraphs.

Special Grand Juries

16. Special grand juries are different from MJGJs. To convene a special grand jury, I
petition the Circuit Court of Danville to investigate a specific allegation of a criminal violation,
pursuant to Section 19.2-206, et seq. of the Virginia Code. A special grand jury's service is
completed when it either issues a report about the incident it is investigating or returns an
indictment in the case.

17. Similar to my office's practice of not keeping a list of witnesses that appear
before the MJGJ, we did not keep a list of special grand juries or the witnesses. I have gone back
through the list of subpoenas issued to determine what special grand juries I convened during the
relevant time period. I now know of two special grand juries that investigated homicides.

18. Those homicides included the Jamalcom Daniels murder, in which six witnesses
testified. Sean James Ballard was tried and convicted of manslaughter in relation to this murder.
The witnesses that appeared therein included C.B., who was a member of the Rollin 60s Crips. I
did not tell the prosecution team about this special grand jury until the morning of October 18,
2019, because I did not think it was relevant to the instant prosecution.

19. A special grand jury also investigated a murder that occurred on Ross Street in
Danville. In that case, Deshaun Trent, a defendant in the instant federal prosecution, who is
represented by Chris Kowalczuk and Patrick Kenney, was also represented by these two
attomeys in the state case. In the state case, Trent pleaded guilty to shooting into a vehicle. At
the hearing in this case on October 17 , 2079, counsel for Trent represented to the court that the

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 Ross Street state investigation and attendant testimony was not related to the instant federal
prosecution.

20. Similar to the MJGJ's practices, recordings are made of the witnesses' testimony
before a special grandjury. I have not provided any ofthe recordings to these special grand
juries to the prosecution team in this case.

21. As a result of the above, I am withdrawing as counsel of record for the United
States.

Michael J. Newman
Commonwealth's
Danville,

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