Court of Appeals upholds murder conviction
A Neshoba County man convicted in connection with the 2019 Hope pond murder had his sentence upheld by the State Court of Appeals last week.
The man, Justus Davon Barfield was found guilty of accessory to murder after the fact last March.
Barfield was one of nine people who were suspected in the murder of DeMarquis Houston, whose body was found weighed down in a pond on a farm in the Hope community.
He was sentenced to a term of 20 years in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections, with 10 years to serve and the last 10 years suspended, followed by five years of supervised probation.
Last week the Mississippi Court of Appeals upheld that sentence.
“We find that the assignments of error raised by Barfield presents no reversible error and that his conviction and sentence should be affirmed,” The court said on the matter.
Barfield, 28, of 10461 Road 545, turned himself in to serve his sentence on Dec. 13, according to Neshoba County Jail records.
Initially, three people were charged with capital murder in the case. Two of the three pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges. Tyrone Braxton, 24, and Joanna Brook Gilmer, 26, pleaded guilty in a plea bargain with the District Attorney’s Office.
Braxton was sentenced to 20 years in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections. Gilmer was sentenced to 12 years.
James Walter Kelly Jr. was found guilty of the murder in mid November of last year. Another accomplice, Ian Caleb Thompson also pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact.
Houston’s family had reported him missing on Oct. 23, 2019.
Acting on a tip, Sheriff Eric Clark and other law enforcement agencies drained the pond and found the body. Initially, the Neshoba County Sheriff’s Office and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigations charged nine people after the body was found on Feb. 14, 2020.
Houston, 19 at the time, of Philadelphia, died by suffocation according to records. District Attorney Steve Kilgore has said Houston was dead before his body was placed in the pond.
Court documents from the appeal reveal new details related to the case and provide a narrative for the night Houston was murdered and the process those involved undertook to conceal the body.
Documents say Kelly worked with Braxton and others on Oct. 20, 2021, to get revenge on Houston. Kelly believed he was part of a trio of men who had robbed his children and their mother at gunpoint.
Gilmer lured Houston to a trailer owned by a family member of Kelly’s under the pretense that they would get high. While at the trailer, sometime after 10 p.m., Kelly and Braxton entered the trailer and zip tied a naked Houston at gunpoint.
They also put tape over his mouth. Sometime later those present reported seeing Houston “seizing up, rolling around like he was having a seizure”, according to court documents.
Court records then say when it was clear that Houston was dead, Kelly asked Braxton if he knew where to put a body. Braxton reportedly helped Kelly hide the body in a freezer.
Between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Oct. 21, court documents say, Kelly, with the help of Barfield and Thompson, assisted Kelly in moving the freezer to the pond where the Sheriff’s Office would find Houston’s body.
Both Thompson and Barfield refused to touch the body, court documents say.
“We can do this,” Thompson reportedly said before getting a forklift loader to move the freezer from Kelly’s vehicle to the pond.
At first, the freezer floated and the trio returned to Thompson’s shop where Thompson reportedly told Kelly, “get whatever you need.”
Thompson and Barfield would not see Kelly again until 3 a.m.
According to court records, Thompson testified that he did not go back to the pond the next day. He stated that because he worked in the area, he would look at the pond from a distance and said he knew that Barfield also checked the pond from time to time because they would have conversations about it. Barfield, at some point, told Thompson that he saw something “protruding from the water.”