Ronald Daniels Jr. has been acquitted in a 2012 Asbury Park murder, reports the Asbury Park Press. Daniels, 24, says he was given a handgun from someone the night Jerome Wright, 30, was murdered in Asbury Park. A jury in Monmouth County apparently accepted that argument. On Monday, the jury acquitted Daniels, 24, of the murder of Jerome Wright, a 30-year-old father of two who was mortally wounded in a spray of gunfire outside the Asbury Park Deli on Atkins Avenue on Sept. 1, 2012.
Daniels, however, was found guilty on other charges.
Asbury Park Press reports:
The panel did find Daniels guilty of unlawful possession of the handgun that authorities said was the murder weapon, but it acquitted him of possessing the gun for the unlawful purpose of using it to kill Wright, said Mark A. Bailey, a Newark defense attorney who represented Daniels at a trial before Superior Court Judge Anthony J. Mellaci Jr.
He faces up to five years in prison for each of the two crimes he was convicted of when he is sentenced by Mellaci on June 15.
Daniels is also to be sentenced on racketeering charges in which he previously pleaded guilty to as a result of his arrest in 2012 in a roundup of alleged heroin dealers that Monmouth County authorities dubbed Operation Hats Off.
When he was arrested, Daniels was in possession of a gun later determined to be the weapon used to murder Wright when he was arrested in Neptune on Sept. 1, 2012, shortly after Wright was fatally shot in Asbury Park, authorities said.
Witnesses for the state testified that Daniels shot a spray of gunfire into a crowd on the Asbury Park street corner:
During the trial, witnesses for the state testified that Wright was fatally wounded when Daniels sprayed gunfire on the street corner. The key witness for the state was Shamere Reid, 21, of Neptune, who was arrested along with Daniels on the night of the murder.
The state’s case was presented by Chris Matthews and Noah Heck, assistant Monmouth County prosecutors.
Reid told the jury that he was with Daniels when Daniels fired four bullets into a crowd of people gathered on a street corner, wounding Wright.
But Bailey said Reid’s story was wrought with inconsistencies and didn’t make sense.
“If you fire into a crowd, you’re certainly not only going to hit one person with four shots,” the defense attorney said.
Bailey said trial testimony indicated the area in front of the delicatessen where the shooting took place is a hangout for members of the Crips street gang.
“Shamere (Reid) said he didn’t know why he was going there, but he’s a Blood, and he admitted there were Crips there,” Bailey said.
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