Prosecution rests in murder trial of ex-Miami player Rashaun Jones - ESPN

MIAMI — Prosecutors rested their case against former Miami Hurricanes football player Rashaun Jones on Wednesday after presenting 21 witnesses in an attempt to prove that Jones had both a gun and a motive to kill teammate Bryan Pata and was notably missing from a mandatory team meeting on the night of the murder.

Attorneys for Jones offered an answer to all the circumstantial evidence jurors heard through five days of testimony but could not rebut the video recorded testimony of an eyewitness who twice identified Jones as the person leaving the scene of the shooting.

The defense was not expected to present additional witnesses, and jurors are set to begin deliberating Thursday.

Recorded testimony that former University of Miami writing instructor Paul Conner gave in 2022 was perhaps the most bracing testimony of the trial so far. The day after the shooting, Conner told police that around the time of the slaying, he saw a man leaving the apartment parking lot where Pata died, and he later picked Jones out of a police lineup.

The nine jurors sat at rapt attention Monday while watching the video, especially when assistant state attorney Kristen Rodriguez showed the jury two printed images. One was a forensic artist's sketch based on Conner's description days after the shooting. The other: a six-image photo lineup, including a picture of Jones that Conner picked out in 2007 and again in 2020, when investigators visited him in Ohio as they reviewed the case.

ESPN's new, seven-part podcast on the slaying of Bryan Pata and the two-decade odyssey to find his killer, is available now. Listen here.

Find ESPN's initial investigation of the Bryan Pata killing and other stories since 2020. Click here.

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