The trial of Kentaevious Raeshon Davis on murder and other charges alleging that he killed two other young men, Christopher Joyce and Jamaryce Mincey, in a Statesboro motel room on Feb. 29, 2024, got underway Monday in Bulloch County Superior Court.

All three men were allegedly armed at the time of the shooting, but investigators and prosecutors maintain that Joyce and Mincey never fired their guns. Besides 13 spent cartridge casings — all reportedly matched to a 9 mm pistol Davis possessed but from more than one ammo brand — and two bullets lodged in the walls and three more in a mattress, items recovered from the room included head-covering balaclava-like masks and tiny amounts of what a police detective called “a baggy containing a white powdery substance” and separately, a tiny amount of a “white, rock-like substance.”

Georgia Bureau of Investigation toxicologists testified that blood from Joyce and Mincey’s bodies tested positive for dimethylpentylone and pentylone or isomers of those drugs. These are among a variety of stimulant or psychoactive drugs given the street name “bath salts” but sometimes misrepresented as “molly” or “ecstasy,” nicknames traditionally reserved for forms of a different abused drug, MDMA. But results were negative for cocaine, and blood alcohol tests were negative for one victim and showed a trace amount for the other.

Graphic testimony from police and expert witnesses and gory images from a crime scene video, dozens of photos and two autopsies filled much of the day for the jury. About six of the 14-member panel of 12 regular jurors plus two alternates appear to be African American. The jury was selected from Bulloch County citizens three weeks earlier for a trial in which the alleged killer and both victims were Black men between the ages of 20 and 23.

‘Denies every charge’

The trial got underway with Senior Judge John R. “Robbie” Turner instructing the jury and reading the charges in the indictment: two counts each of felony murder and malice murder, two counts of aggravated assault and two counts of possession of a firearm during commission of a felony.

“Now, the defendant has pled not-guilty to this indictment, and he denies every charge in it,” Turner told the jurors. “The indictment and the plea of not-guilty are the issues that you have been chosen and selected and sworn to decide. … The charges in the indictment and the plea of not-guilty are not evidence of guilt.”

The opening statements by the defense and prosecution are not evidence either, in this or other trials. But Monday morning’s opening statements provided a “road map” for what followed the first day of the trial and maybe for the rest of the week, with the courtroom reserved through Friday if necessary.

Family at the Inn

Chief Assistant DA Jillian Gibson of the Ogeechee Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office started out presenting the jury with a “who’s who,” identifying several members of a family group who had been staying at the Days Inn on Fair Road for approximately a week when the shootings occurred. 

Gibson stated that Mincey, who was known as “J. Mo,” and was a member of this family, was staying in a different room at the Days Inn, and that at some point “a few days prior,” Davis, also known as “Spook,” and Joyce, who went by “Tootie,” started “hanging out” with this group, most of whom were related or at least knew one another.

On the morning of Feb. 29, several members of the family group departed from the motel, leaving Mincey, two other family members, Joyce and Davis there, according to the prosecutor.

“You’re going to hear evidence as to what they were doing,” Gibson said. “They were all doing drugs. They were smoking what they thought was molly, and they were all getting high in this motel room. … 

“You’re also going to hear that some of the people in this hotel room had guns,” she continued. “The defendant had a gun that day. You’re going to see it on the surveillance videos; you’re going to see evidence that both of the victims had guns on their person. Jamaryce Mincey was found with a firearm, a pistol, tucked in his waistband. Christopher Joyce had a firearm, what some people call a Draco, under him where he was found.”

Surveillance video from a camera right outside the motel room, she said, will show from “all the comings and goings” that there were five people in the room that day.

The two survivors other than Davis will testify, Gibson predicted.

“Three people know what happened in that motel room,” she said. “You’re going to hear from two of them. … You’re going to hear that there was no apparent argument before this happened, no problem, and everybody pretty much knew each other or had some connection in some way, and all of a sudden the defendant shot and killed Jamaryce Mincey, shot him one time in the head, contact wound to the head, shot Christopher Joyce multiple times, he was found on the bed in the motel room.”

Davis and the other two survivors “all ran away,” Gibson said. “No one called the police.”

Only later in the day did a family member, out of town, call the motel and ask the desk clerk — approximately 8:34 p.m. that night — to check on the room because “I think something’s happened.”

Time had passed

The former Days Inn clerk was one of the first witnesses Monday. Audio of her call to 911 and surveillance video from the motel’s camera confirmed that — with a key — she opened the door, quickly closed it again, turned around and walked back to the motel office to make the call. She testified she had seen only one man on the floor, near the bathroom area in the back of the room, in a puddle of blood. That was Mincey. She said another person, on the bed, appeared to be asleep.

But the first Statesboro Police Department officer to arrive on the scene, Officer Kyle Wright, looked first in the window of the motel room, through the gap in the curtains, and saw an apparently lifeless man on the bed nearest the window. Then finding the door still locked, Wright threw a steel trashcan through the window, shattering the glass, for quick entry.

But by then, the blood on the floor was separating and starting to dry, and the two EMS personnel who arrived soon confirmed there were no signs of life, but rigor mortis beginning. 

Wright testified Monday, along with his body-worn camera video, followed by Detective Sgt. Keith Holloway, the SPD’s crime scene specialist, with his overview video of the scene and all of those photographs.

‘No reason to kill’

But Ogeechee Circuit Assistant Public Defender Que’Andra Campbell, in her opening statement, rejected the prosecution’s explanation of events and predictions about what the evidence will show.

“Now the state spoke to you, they’re going to present two witnesses that say Mr. Davis committed these crimes, and one of the main issues is, Mr. Davis doesn’t have a motive,” Campbell told the jurors. “In simpler terms, Mr. Davis had no reason to kill Jamaryce Mincey; he had no reason to kill Christopher Joyce, but someone did.

“So the question in my mind is, why would two people lie? Why would they lie?” she asked. “And who had motive to kill Jamaryce Mincey? Who had motive to kill Christopher Joyce? Who are the witnesses protecting in this case?”

Among other things, she stated that Davis was the only member of the group who was not related to the rest. 

Turner sent the jury home a little before 5 p.m. Monday with instructions to return shortly before 9 a.m. Tuesday.