| MySpace |
| Kadeem Wilkerson: “When I pulled out the firearm, their attitude just changed up. I got my weed back…” |
Hey man — I didn’t rob these people. They tried to rob me when I sold them marijuana. That’s a line of defense you don’t see very often, especially in Georgia. But it worked.
A Georgia jury on Wednesday found a 20-year-old man not guilty of armed robbery after he testified he went to Liberty Garden Townhomes in Columbus in 2010 to sell marijuana to customers who then tried to rob him, rather than the other way around, report Alan Riquelmy and Tim Chitwood of the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer.
Defense attorney Stacey Jackson said he thought jurors were swayed by Kadeem Wilkerson’s “brutally honest” testimony about having sold pot, and his testimony was backed up by a marijuana conviction in Chattahoochee County. Imagine that — a pot conviction that helps you!
In addition, prosecution witnesses had obvious holes in their stories which jurors could not have overlooked, according to Jackson. Witnesses testified they had never seen Wilkerson before that day in 2010, but 911 transcripts showed that one of them told dispatchers he had seen Wilkerson before at the apartment complex.
| MySpace |
| Ya think?! |
Of course, if prosecutors had really wanted to know whether Kadeem sold weed, they could have just checked his MySpace account, including a message to a friend in 2010: “Call me asap I got something for you.”
Wilkerson took the stand in his own defense, telling jurors he went to the apartment complex on June 1, 2010, to sell five pounds of marijuana to a regular customer.
He said he climbed the stairs to the man’s apartment and knocked, then waited briefly as other guests left before going in and placing his backpack full of marijuana on the living room table.
His customer handed over a fistful of dollars, and Wilkerson said he started counting the money. When he realized the cash was thousands short, another man came up and pointed a revolver at him, he said.
“I stepped back, because the gun was too close to my face,” Wilkerson said.
But then Kadeem noticed something. Dude’s gun didn’t have any bullets in it. At that point, he said he pulled his own gun from his waistband.
“When I pulled out my firearm, their attitude just changed up,” Wilkerson said. “I got my weed back, and I went out the door like this and left. Selling drugs is just like having a bank. You can get robbed.”
Wilkerson’s not dumb; he never reported the incident to police. But he got arrested in August 2010 after apartment residents accused him of taking a TV and an Xbox at gunpoint.
Assistant District Attorney David Helmick, in his cross-examination Wednesday, questioned Wilkerson’s claim of having sold pounds of marijuana at once. The prosecutor delved into how much cannabis Wilkerson sold, where he bought it and his claim that he never personally smoked it.
Helmick told Superior Court Judge John Allen this line of questioning was “crucial,” claiming Wilkerson was never a weed dealer.
But Wilkerson said he began selling quarter-ounces of pot after being exposed to it in high school. He said he moved up to selling it by the pound and making about $200-$300 profit a sale. He stopped selling weed after his mom found the drug in her home in late 2010, he said. That ain’t gangsta!
