Jury convicts Hopkins man in murder-for-hire plot

Supporters of convicted killer Dameon Gatson wept Friday morning and stormed out of court, slamming a door before Hennepin County District Judge Daniel Moreno could finish reading the third guilty verdict against the 25-year-old Hopkins man.

Moreno had warned several people in the gallery to refrain from making "hoots or hollers," but Gatson's younger brother, Cashmir Smith, couldn't control his emotions as the jury convicted Gatson of hiring a friend in 2007 to punch his pregnant girlfriend to kill her fetus.

Gatson showed no emotion as he was convicted of first- and second-degree murder and first-degree assault.

But Gatson's fiancée, Jackie Morris, collapsed outside the courtroom, sitting on the floor and crying with her head on a bench. His supporters were too distraught to talk after the verdict, but they said earlier in the week that he is innocent.

"It's ridiculous," Smith said Thursday afternoon when the jury began deliberations. "They don't have any proof." "That's not his character," Morris said Thursday.

Assistant County Attorney Marlene Senechal said "justice had been done."

The prosecution had argued that in April 2007, Gatson concocted an alibi that he was in St. Louis, then picked up his friend, Paul A. Petersen, drove him to where his girlfriend Shyloe Linde was staying, and waited nearby as the getaway driver while Petersen attacked Linde.

Linde, who was six months pregnant, gave birth the next day to a baby girl she named Destiny Gatson. She elected to remove Destiny from life support nine days later after learning that she would suffer from crippling medical problems.

Although prosecutors Amy Sweasy and Thad Tudor did not specifically address Gatson's motive before the jury, motions made in court showed they had wanted to introduce transcripts of interviews with Petersen in which he said Gatson hired him to punch Linde because Gatson did not want to pay child support. Gatson has a 6-year-old son with another woman and was dating that woman, Morris and Linde at the time of the attack, prosecutors said.

Petersen admitted to accepting $40 to show up at a St. Louis Park apartment and punching Linde twice in the stomach. He said Gatson had promised him $200. Petersen pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and first-degree assault last December and was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Prosecutors said their case was dealt a severe blow when Petersen refused to testify earlier this week. Prosecutors contended that Gatson had threatened Petersen to keep him from testifying. But Gatson's attorney, Emmett Donnelly, denied the allegation, saying that his case was harmed when Petersen didn't testify because the defense "couldn't cross-examine him and expose his lies."

Will seek new trial

Donnelly said he will seek a new trial for Gatson "so a jury can hear all the evidence."

The defense's strategy appeared to center on the idea that Destiny's death was precipitated by the removal of life support and not Gatson's actions. Sweasy attacked that strategy in her closing argument, noting that if not for Gatson's "absolutely crazy plot," Destiny wouldn't have needed life support.

"You can't blame the doctors that Destiny died," Sweasy said. "You can't blame Shyloe for discontinuing life support. ... It is an out-and-out absurdity, such an argument that it was a failing of medical science."

Donnelly said Gatson is deeply saddened by the verdict and "absolutely denies" any involvement in harming his child.

He faces life in prison for the first-degree murder conviction alone. Sentencing is set for Nov. 10.

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