Sage will formally sentence McKelton Nov. 2. Sage could choose one of the life options, instead of the jury’s death decree, but overruling a jury’s recommendation is rare.
The jury last week found McKelton guilty of strangling Margaret “Missy” Allen in July 2008 and for the February 2009 shooting death of Germaine Evans Sr., who witnessed the crime. Evans’ murder carried the possibility of a death penalty because he was killed so that he could not implicate McKelton in Allen’s death, which is an aggravating factor according to Ohio law.
Sheridan Evans, Germaine’s mother and grandmother to McKelton’s son, testified at trial and waited for hours Thursday night to hear the jury’s recommendation. She didn’t make it in time Friday morning to hear the sentencing verdict.
“We planned to leave here about noon,” Evans said. “And be there to hear it. I was just in shock it happened so fast.”
Mother of slain man says she does not favor the death penalty
“I have known Calvin since he was a boy,” Evans said. “He is someone’s child, too.”
A jury recommended Friday that McKelton, 33, be condemned a week after the same jury convicted him on 10 counts in the July 2008 strangulation death of his girlfriend, Fairfield attorney Margaret “Missy” Allen, and in the February 2009 execution-style shooting of Germaine Evans Sr., who witnessed the crime.
Sheridan Evans of Cincinnati, the mother of 10 children, said she is thankful justice has been done, but that too many lives have been lost.
“I hope all these guys out there use this trial to stop the killing,” she said of drug dealers and gang members on the streets of Cincinnati. “They have to realize you don’t just kill a single person when you shoot; you are killing a generation.”
She said she planned to spend her afternoon lighting a candle for her son and Allen. She and McKelton’s mother, Audrey, grew up together. During the trial, Evans and Allen’s mother, Rebecca, talked and sat together outside the courtroom.
“I hope Calvin’s family can move on, I hope Rebecca can move on and I will try to move on,” she said.
Rebecca Allen said she is “fine” with the jury’s decision, but it didn’t matter to her either way.
“I want the menace off the streets so he can’t hurt anyone else,” Allen said.
Defense attorneys Melynda Cook and Greg Howard expressed disappointment with the jury’s verdict, which is the first death sentence imposed by a Butler County jury in a decade.
The defense said the suburban, all-white jury had difficulty understanding McKelton’s lifestyle and upbringing in a neighborhood where crime was a way of life.
“He grew up much different than … the lily-white jury,” Cook said, but she added she understands how difficult it is for a jury to give death, and she is sure they weighed that decision.
“We wish they had come back with a life verdict, Calvin wishes so, too,” she said. “His daughters will be fairly upset.”
The jury was tasked with deciding whether McKelton deserves to be executed or should serve one of three life options: life in prison without the possibility of parole, life in prison with eligibility for parole after 30 years, or 25 years to life.
Assistant Prosecutor Lance Salyers applauded the jury for its recommedation.
“They did the hard thing. … it was very gratifying to see them do that,” Salyers said.
He disagreed with the defense that the jury could not fully understand McKelton’s background.
“I don’t think they were too white, or too suburban or whatever,” Salyers said. “What they were is all too familiar with the facts of this case.”
The jury reached a decision in two hours Friday morning after beginning deliberations anew with an alternate, who had been in court for all testimony. Judge Michael Sage dismissed a juror around 9:30 p.m. Thursday, after six hours of deliberation, because she refused to participate, saying she wanted to be with her mother in Virginia who was having surgery.
McKelton took the stand Thursday morning, asking the jury to spare his life.
“I want to live, I want to be a part of my children’s lives,” he said, reading from a prepared statement. “I am sorry for all the wrongdoings I have ever done.” However, his statements made no mention of his victims, and alluded to his innocence.
McKelton, known as “C-Murder” to police and associates and “Cal” to his friends, said he became a drug dealer at age 14 growing up in the Moosewood housing complex on Cincinnati’s west side, where as a young boy he witnessed his mother getting high on crack cocaine.
He said there was a time when he loved his neighborhood, but in 1985 “when crack hit the scene, our lives changed forever.”
McKelton admitted to dealing drugs and making “hundreds of thousands of dollars” and robbing drug dealers. The criminal activity got him shot three times and claimed the lives of several acquaintances.
He said his life of crime provided for his brother and sisters while his mother was on the streets.
“I am not this monster the prosecutor says I am,” McKelton said, adding he wants to live so he can teach his daughters they don’t have to have to have drug dealers for boyfriends and husbands, and so he can be a father to his infant son.
“Even from jail, I can teach my son right from wrong,” he said.
McKelton’s 13-year-old daughter and mother, Audrey, sobbed as she recalled her life when her children were young as she fell victim to drugs and became a prostitute.
She, too, lived a life filled with violence, noting she went to prison for stabbing a woman who showed up at her door looking for her husband.
“I got into anything from drinking, to drugging to prostitution, just anything that (consisted) of money,” she said, adding that she soon didn’t care about her children because drugs had taken over. She pleaded for her son’s life, saying maybe in prison he could help someone else.
“He’s God’s child for one thing. If God can save me, He can save him.”
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