Appeal date set for man convicted of Columbia murder

A Missouri appeal’s court will consider the case for a man convicted of murder in Columbia.

On Tuesday, the second anniversary of Tre’Veon Marshall’s shooting death, the Western District Court of Appeals placed 21-year-old Nicholas Thomas’ first-degree murder case on its docket for August 21. A Boone County jury found Thomas guilty of first-degree murder in June 2014 for the murder of the 17-year-old at McKee Park in Columbia. Thomas is serving a life sentence without the possibility for parole at Jefferson City Correctional Center.

Prosecutors said Thomas, along with Joshua Murray, drove to McKee Park on July 14, 2013 with two others. When they noticed Marshall and another girl walking into the park, Thomas told the driver to park nearby. Both he and Murray walked into the park with shirts around their faces, Murray said in his testimony at the trial, and Thomas shot Marshall in the back after the groups walked past each other.

Thomas’ appeal attorney, Rosalynn Koch, claims the court should have allowed other evidence that may have implicated another person. On the night Marshall was killed, another person in Columbia posted a picture of himself on Facebook with a shirt around his face.

“Got to go low-key. Police are going to come looking for me,” the caption on the photo read, according to Koch’s brief.

Judge Kevin Crane did not allow the evidence into the trial, the prosecution calling it “hearsay.” Mary Highland Moore, defending the conviction for the state’s Attorney General’s Office, said the picture would have only cast a “bare suspicion” on the other person.

“Evidence that has no other effect than to cast a bare suspicion on another, or to raise a conjectural inference as to the commission of the crime by another , is inadmissible,” said Moore’s respondent brief.

Koch argued, however, that the picture was not meant to pin the crime on another.

“All it was attempting to show was that the police failed to conduct a thorough investigation and their decision to pursue [Thomas] exclusively was questionable,” the brief reads. “Had the jury understood fully what the police had done…and how they had disregarded contrary evidence, it would have been less likely to convict.”

The appeal’s court will deliberate the matter based on the briefs filed. Terence Lord, the court’s clerk, said it usually takes 30-40 days for the court to hand down its decision.