CENTENNIAL — Sir Mario Owens was a cold-blooded killer who ambushed a witness scheduled to testify against Owens’ best friend, prosecutors said today during closing arguments.
The five-week trial for Owens, accused of killing Javad Marshall-Fields and his fiancee, Vivian Wolfe, in June 2005, is now be in the hands of the jury, which will begin deliberating Monday morning.
If convicted, prosecutors have said they will ask for the death penalty against Owens.
Marshall-Fields was scheduled to testify against Owens’ friend, Robert Ray, in the death of another man a year earlier at a Fourth of July rap event and barbecue at Lowry Park in Aurora. But he was killed on the eve of that trial.
Both Ray and Owens have already been convicted in that case. Owens received life in prison without parole in the shooting death of Gregory Vann at the park.
On Friday, prosecutor Ann Tomsic said Owens and another man waited near Marshall-Fields’ apartment, then opened fire on the car carrying Marshall-Fields and his fiancee.
“Everything about this crime speaks first-degree murder,” Tomsic said during closing arguments in Arapahoe County District Court.
“The shooter hung his head and his arm out the window as he fired a 45-caliber revolver into the car,” Tomsic said. “Sir Mario Owens is in fact the killer in this case.”
But defense attorney Laurie Kepros tried to cast doubt with the jury that someone else killed Marshall-Fields and Wolfe.
She alluded to a friend of Ray’s from Chicago who was staying with him at the time of the killings.
She also questioned why authorities did not test hairs on a baseball cap found at the crime scene that DNA confirmed belonged to Owens.
“Nobody tried, nobody ever looked,” she said.
During much of her closing arguments, Kepros went over instructions the jury had been given earlier. She also questioned the credibility of prosecution witnesses, some who had cut deals with the district attorney’s office and others who were jail inmates.
“When you have conflicting information, you have to have a reason to believe it or a reason not to believe it,” she told the jury.
But prosecutors maintained that Owens was clearly the shooter. Tomsic said that after the shooting deaths, Owens called Ray and said, ” “It’s tooken care of.’ ”
A main contention by prosecutors was that Owens was into the “Stop-Snitchin” culture, threats directed at people who tell police about crimes. When Owens was pulled over and arrested in Louisiana for the Vann murder, Owens had several “Stop Snitchin” T-Shirts in his car, Tomsic said.
“It is his view of the world, it is his value system,” Tomsic said. ”
But Kepros told the jury that attitude was irrelevant in this case.
“You’re not here to decide the attitude of anybody,” Kepros said.
Several family members of both victims were at court Friday, including Marshall-Fields’ mother, Rhonda Fields.
Tomsic said Marshall-Fields wanted to come back here and seek justice for his friend, Vann.
“That opportunity was denied,” Tomsic said.
Carlos Illescas: 303-954-1175 or cillescas@denverpost.com.
