Suspect who changed name to hide from the police is convicted in 2002 Md. slaying -

A calculating Montgomery County murder suspect who changed his identity to hide from police for 12 years was convicted Tuesday in the execution-style killing of an acquaintance in front of the victim’s screaming 11-year-old daughter.

Clement Reynolds, who had long held himself out to be Dennis Graham and had forged a successful music promotions career, could face up to life in prison at his sentencing hearing in March for the murder of Wesley King. Reynolds showed little emotion as the verdict was read, blinking his eyes and looking from juror to juror, before looking down as Circuit Court Judge Joseph A. Dugan Jr. addressed the jury.

“I think your verdict was absolutely consistent with the evidence,” Dugan said.

During the six-day trial, jurors heard about heartbreak — King’s daughter, now 23, testified — and about the relative ease in which Reynolds adopted a new name, obtained identification cards and passports, and went about a life in New York City that had him regularly traveling to Jamaica.

By the end of the proceedings, the prosecutors and defense attorneys had staked out diametrically opposite positions. There was little gray area or overlapping theories regarding the Nov. 18, 2002, murder.

In prosecutor Marybeth Ayres’s telling, Reynolds was so conniving that he staged his own carjacking three days before the slaying, reporting to Prince George’s County police that two armed men made off with his cellphone and his Chrysler Town & Country minivan. Ayres said that Reynolds regularly traveled to Maryland from New York to sell large quantities of marijuana.

Defense attorney Robert Bonsib said the theft of the cellphone and minivan was real and showed that Reynolds could not have been in a white minivan that had been spotted leaving the murder scene in Montgomery’s Briggs Chaney area.

There were three alibi witnesses as well. Bonsib said they confirmed that his client was in New York at the time of King’s slaying. Prosecutors said the three were lying.

In the end, jurors sided with the prosecutors — doing so after less than three hours of deliberations. In interviews after the verdict, three jurors cited several reasons: the gripping testimony of King’s daughter; a cellphone mistakenly left at the crime scene that was linked to Reynolds; the testimony of Reynolds himself.

“He seemed like the kind of guy who would try to talk his way out of anything,” said a 32-year-old juror, who like the other two spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his privacy.

The jurors described as very credible the testimony of Nickesha King, who recalled being within 10 feet of her father when he was shot in the face. She offered particularly specific details and was eventually overcome by the emotions of such indelible images.

The 32-year-year old juror said he looked at Reynolds as Nickesha King testified. He was looking for some kind of reaction, particularly since Reynolds had described Wesley King as a friend.

"He showed no emotion, and that was supposed to be his good friend," the juror said.

"My heart went out to her," another juror said. "He just sat there, coldhearted, looking at her."

Several of the victim’s family members and friends were in court Tuesday for the verdict. Afterward, Felecia King, 30, another of his daughters, walked out to a hallway and called her sister Nickesha back home and addressed her by her nickname: “Pinky, he’s guilty!”

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