Examiner.com – by Luke Broadwater – The Examiner
Baltimore – Prosecutors thought they had a surefire case against a 19-year-old Woodlawn man who they said killed a transvestite in a St. Paul Street apartment complex and set the victim on fire.
But a Baltimore City jury disagreed Thursday ? and acquitted Zukael Stephens of all counts.
?This was not a stupid Baltimore City jury,? said Stephens? attorney, Linwood Hedgepeth. ?What would you believe: What a prosecutor says or your own eyes? The jury believed their own eyes.?
Much of the trial seemed to center on a surveillance video that police said showed Stephens hurrying from the building on the 1000 block of St. Paul Street at 10:49 p.m. on Oct. 11, 2006. A call for a fire in which Marcus Rogers, a cross-dresser, was injured inside the apartment came at 10:51 p.m. Suffering from a fractured skull, burns on his back and cuts on his face, Rogers died six days later at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center.