A Juneau jury of four men and eight women are now deliberating in the homicide case of Mark DeSimone in Juneau Superior Court.
After listening to over a week’s worth of witness testimony and evidence presentation, jurors heard closing arguments Thursday morning before retiring to deliberate.
DeSimone faces five charges related to the May 2016 shooting death of Tony Rosales at an Excursion Inlet cabin. The charges include first-degree murder, two counts of second-degree murder, manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.
Jurors need only convict on just one of the charges or acquit on all of them.
Assistant Public Defender Deborah Macaulay asked the jury for a complete acquittal.
Macaulay argued that DeSimone unintentionally shot Rosales twice in the back of the head after DeSimone attempted to check to see whether the revolver’s cylinder was loaded.
The two shots happened so fast back-to-back, Macaulay said, that there was no way that DeSimone would have time to intentionally cock the .41 single-action revolver, fire, cock again, re-aim and then fire again, which is the assertion of the prosecution’s firearm examiner.
“The shots had to have been too fast,” Macaulay said. “So, what do we have? We have now a man who is an amateur with guns. We have shots that went off extremely fast. And, we do have two injuries that are extremely close together. (The firearms examiner) says that can’t happen. But that’s the physical evidence. That’s the evidence in this case.”
Assistant District Attorney Amy Paige argued there was nothing wrong with revolver used to shoot Rosales.
She dismissed the defense’s main argument that an involuntary muscle response was responsible for the unintentional firing of two shots.
Paige said a witness in a nearby cabin reported walking three to four steps between shots, not the immediate back-to-back shots asserted by the defense.
“What’s different about boom-boom?” Paige asked. “Well, what’s different is that it is coming from a person who wasn’t there, who didn’t hear the shots, who can’t draw any conclusions about them. It’s coming from a person who’s being paid by the defendant to tell you that. That’s the difference. Boom-boom is not what happened. The evidence is that there was plenty of time. Boom … boom. ”
After closing arguments, two jurors — both men — were randomly selected and excused as alternates before start of deliberations.
