After viewing more than 100 exhibits and hearing four days worth of testimony, jurors began deliberations late Friday in the case against Miguel Quinones.
Quinones faces charges of first-degree murder and kidnapping in the 2013 death of Kareem Hunter, who was beaten inside a Marmet apartment and then tied up and stuffed into the trunk of a Cadillac. His body was found more than a month after he was reported missing, buried in a shallow grave in Raleigh County.
Prosecutors claim that Quinones - jealous that his girlfriend might still be romantically involved with Hunter and nervous that Hunter might have been planning to rob him - attacked Hunter with a rubber mallet inside a Marmet apartment on Sept. 23, 2013.
Jurors will decide Quinones' fate without ever hearing from him - as he decided Friday that he would not take the stand to testify on his own behalf.
Kanawha Circuit Judge Joanna Tabit planned to have jurors deliberate until 8 p.m. Friday.
Quinones' attorneys argue that their client wasn't present during Hunter's killing. Quinones only helped clean up the bloody apartment in the days following the slaying, according to his lawyers.
"The defendant helped clean up evidence," Assistant Kanawha Prosecutor Jennifer Gordon said Friday in closing arguments. "Why? Do you believe it was out of the goodness of his heart? No, it was because he was the one implicated and the one who committed the murder."
Two people already have pleaded guilty for their roles in Hunter's death. Deveron Patterson pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison, with the possibility of parole. The deal he made with prosecutors required that a judge grant him mercy, meaning he can go before a parole board after serving at least 15 years of his sentence.
Kelsey Legg was sentenced to spend between six and eight years in prison after she pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to murder.
Legg was originally the only person charged in Hunter's death. Police filed a murder charge against her before locating Hunter's body. Prosecutors allowed her to plead guilty to the lesser charges after she told police that she watched Patterson and Quinones kill Hunter.
As part of their deals with prosecutors, both Legg and Patterson had to agree to testify against Quinones at trial. Patterson testified on Tuesday and backed prosecutors' claims that he helped Quinones kill Hunter.
Prosecutors never called Legg to the stand to testify. First Assistant Prosecutor Don Morris told a reporter he shouldn't comment about the case during the trial.
Defense attorneys had planned to call Legg as a witness on Friday morning, Robert Dunlap, who represents Quinones, said Thursday afternoon, right before court adjourned. He never said why he changed his mind about calling Legg.
Dunlap told jurors in opening statements Tuesday that Legg and Patterson had wrongly implicated Quinones in the killing to put the blame on someone else so that they would receive lighter sentences.
On Friday, Shawnique Hudson, Quinones' girlfriend and the mother of his child, took the stand, despite having sat through every day of the trial. She was supposed to have been sequestered and kept out of the courtroom as she had been named as a possible witness for the defense.
Hudson told jurors that Quinones had never been out of her sight for six hours in September 2013 - the amount of time he would have needed to kill Hunter.
Hudson, who is Patterson's cousin, told jurors that Patterson would often borrow Quinones' car, including the Cadillac, in which Hunter's DNA was found.
She became emotional when asked about whether she would lie to protect Quinones. She said she wouldn't, "Not about this," she said, tearing up, "because Hunter was my friend.
"Deveron Patterson is my family, but you know what, my family is lying," Quinones' lawyer Dunlap said, summarizing Hudson's testimony during his closing arguments.
Although Dunlap said that his client wasn't present during Hunter's death, jurors were never told where he was instead.
Hudson, during cross examination, realized she had mixed up the dates she thought they were in New York together.
Among some of the evidence jurors took with them to review are dozens of cell phone records.
Law enforcement officers testified earlier this week about evidence of Quinones' cell phone being in Marmet at the time of Hunter's beating. Cell phone towers then tracked Quinones' phone to Beckley and to Old Turnpike Road, where Hunter's body was found, on the day of the killing.
Reach Kate White at kate.white@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1723 or follow @KateLWhite on Twitter.