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WILKES-BARRE — Jerone Andre Moore says the jury got it all wrong in convicting him Friday for slashing the throat of Dayna Williams.
“I apologize for what happened to her,” he said, “but they convicted the wrong person.”
After almost four hours of deliberations — and one request to define “reasonable doubt” — jurors determined Moore was guilty of attempted murder of the first-degree and kidnapping, finding he abducted Dayna Williams, slashed her throat with a knife, and left her for dead in a remote area of Bear Creek Township in 2014.
Moore, 33, of Wilkes-Barre, did not react as the verdict was read, but offered his thoughts on his conviction moments later as he was led out of the courthouse in shackles.
“You can’t win them all, man,” he said.
Following the verdict, prosecutor Mamie Phillips acknowledged she was concerned when jurors posed their question, but said they clearly took their time and got the verdict right.
“We’re pleased we were able to take, for lack of a better word, an animal off the streets of Luzerne County and put him behind bars for what will be, hopefully, most of the rest of his natural life,” Phillips said. She noted Moore faces up to 60 years in prison at sentencing on April 10.
Williams, 24, described to jurors Wednesday how she was stripped naked, beaten, burned, and sealed in a barrel while held captive at a residence in Wilkes-Barre on Oct. 5, 2014. Hours later, Moore and Nygee Jamal Taylor led her to a dark, wooded area where Moore cut her throat, she said.
She survived a 3-inch-deep gash to her neck and stumbled naked and covered in blood to a nearby home, she said. On the stand, she identified Moore as the man who cut her, saying she offered him a place to stay at her home in Pittston after meeting him at a bus stop in Wilkes-Barre.
The next day, Moore took Williams to a party at a North Hancock Street residence shared by Taylor and his baby’s mother, Chloe Amelia Isaacs. During that party, Isaacs’ iPhone was stolen. Taylor and Isaacs believed Williams stole the phone, which allegedly contained information incriminating them as drug dealers. So, they demanded Williams be brought back to the residence to answer for it.
There, prosecutor Phillips said, Williams endured “the most horrific thing she’s ever gone through.”
Williams broke down at times describing the ordeal during her testimony. She appeared flustered during a lengthy cross-examination by defense attorney David V. Lampman II, often looking to prosecutors for help.
Her performance in court — and her absence throughout the remainder of the four-day trial — were a result of the nightmare she relived on the stand, Phillips said.
“You don’t live through something like this and expect to come in and testify like a normal human being,” said Phillips.
‘She didn’t die’
Moore’s conviction is the third in the case. Taylor, 27, pleaded guilty last week to conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and was sentenced to 9½ to 19 years in state prison, while Isaacs admitted to false imprisonment and assault charges in July. She is awaiting sentencing.
Lampman could not be reached for comment following the verdict. In his closing argument Friday morning, he acknowledged “no one deserves to be brutalized” like Williams. But he urged jurors not to let their sympathy for her and her injuries influence their decision.
Moore’s mere presence at the scene shouldn’t be enough to convict him, he told jurors, noting witness Darnell Evans was at the apartment and the scene but has not been charged. The fact that prosecutors didn’t obtain a DNA sample from Evans showed that Moore “always had that bull’s-eye on him,” he said.
Lampman further argued “there’s not a bit” of physical evidence to support convicting Moore — who he said was the “fall guy.”
The defense attorney also pointed to Williams’ inconsistencies in her testimony.
Despite identifying Moore as the man who cut her this week, Williams said she didn’t know who took a knife to her throat when she testified at a preliminary hearing in June 2015, Lampman argued.
Williams’ performance during cross-examination further indicated she was unsure whether it was Moore or Taylor who attacked her, the attorney told jurors.
“That, ladies and gentlemen, of all the troubling things, is the most troubling in this case,” Lampman said. “She’s not sure of it. How could you be?”
In her closing, co-prosecutor Angela Sperrazza revisited fellow prosecutor Phillips’ opening statement, during which she warned jurors the details of the case would be “horrifying” to hear.
Sperrazza repeated testimony about Moore allegedly offering to kill Williams with a knife because he was good with the weapon and a gun would be too loud.
“The most horrifying fact about that case is that conversation happens while Dayna Williams is upstairs in a barrel, naked and afraid,” Sperrazza said. “She urinates on herself. She is praying for her life, and the man who she gave a place to stay is calmly sitting downstairs talking about how he’s going to end her life. That’s beyond horrific. It is cold, it is calculated and it is exactly what Jerone Moore did.”
Moore, Sperrazza argued, did everything he could to kill Williams, only Williams didn’t do what he expected her to do.
“She didn’t die,” she said.
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