YOUNGSTOWN — A recently released document offers the closest thing to an explanation for the senseless 2020 murder of 4-year-old Rowan Sweeney that anyone yet has offered.

A document called a “proffer” in the criminal case of Kimonie Bryant, 28, suggests that Bryant and co-defendant Brandon Crump Jr., 21, were using the drug ecstasy before the early morning that Crump walked into a house in Struthers Sept. 21, 2020, as part of a robbery and killed Rowan, along with shooting four adults.

Bryant, Crump and co-defendant Andre McCoy Jr., 24, all received life prison sentences for their roles in the crimes.

Rowan’s father, David Sweeney, has said he does not have an explanation for why his beloved 4-year-old was shot to death as he slept on a couch and his mother begged the shooter not to hurt him.

“We hear of robberies all the time,” David Sweeney said. “People do it with a gun. What would draw someone’s mind to just start shooting and to see a child sleeping and to think to shoot and kill him as well. I will never understand it.”

The proffer Bryant made in the case Nov. 7, 2023, provides details that might offer the answer. Bryant provided the details as part of a plea agreement he reached with prosecutors to testify, if necessary, against Crump if Crump’s case went to trial. It did.

A proffer is a legal term and a procedure — sometimes thought of as a contract — used sometimes in major cases in Mahoning County whereby a co-defendant and the prosecution agree on what the co-defendant must do to get a certain prosecutor-recommended sentence.

The term proffer means various things to prosecutors in different counties or in federal court versus state court, according to local legal experts, including incoming Mahoning County Prosecutor Lynn Maro. In Mahoning County, proffers have been used to obtain cooperation from co-defendants in high-profile murder cases.

For Bryant’s proffer, he sat down with two assistant prosecutors, his two attorneys, two criminal investigators and a court reporter and answered questions to put his version of events on the record, according to a recently released transcript of the meeting produced for Crump’s appeal of his convictions and sentence.

Bryant was advised that anything he said could and would be used against him in a court of law. But if he told the truth and cooperated with prosecutors, he would avoid the possibility of the death penalty and instead get a prosecutor-recommendation of 20 years to life in prison and an aggravated murder conviction. Bryant still got that recommended sentence even though he did not live up to all of the terms of his proffer.

Mike Yacovone, then an assistant prosecutor, and now a private-practice attorney, asked Bryant on Nov. 7, 2023, in a private room in the courthouse if he, Crump and co-defendant Andre McCoy Jr. spoke Sept. 20 at a home on LaClede Avenue in Youngstown, and Bryant agreed they did. Bryant agreed that the purpose of going to Struthers early Sept. 21, 2020, was to rob Yarnell Green, one of the adults in the home. McCoy had proposed the robbery and Bryant agreed.

USED ECSTASY

“You told me that at no point in time was shooting or killing anyone discussed during this planning, correct?” Yacovone asked, and Bryant answered “Yes.” Then Bryant agreed that after the meeting, he and Crump went to a home on Cassius Avenue in Youngstown and took the drug ecstasy.

“You told me that you are high for basically the rest of the day?” Yacovone asked. “Yes,” Bryant answered. Yacovone then asked if Bryant took any other drugs that evening before going to Struthers and Bryant said no.

“But you cannot say for sure — you only know Brandon to have taken ecstasy, you don’t know what else he may have taken?” Yacovone asked, and Bryant answered “Correct.”

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, ecstasy, known also as MDMA or Molly, “has effects similar to stimulants like methamphetamine, although some researchers and organizations consider MDMA to be a psychedelic drug because it can also mildly alter visual and time perception.”

The NIDA notes its “effects include feeling happy, energetic, alert, and closer to others. In addition, people report increased sensitivity to sights, sounds, touch and smells. These effects peak within 15 to 30 minutes and last an average of three hours.”

Crump was 17 at the time of the killing. His attorney, Lou DeFabio, offered remarks at Crump’s sentencing to 52 years to life in prison about the difficult circumstances of Crump’s upbringing, including the way his mother “pawned Brandon off on any number of people throughout his life, such that by the time he is 11, he is living on the streets.” His mother used him to “steal food to feed the family or sell a gun to a guy, which ended up in him getting shot during the gun sale,” DeFabio said.

Crump’s age prevented him from being eligible for the death penalty. Ohio legislators have passed laws in recent years to ensure that most individuals who commit murder as a juvenile get a “meaningful opportunity” to leave prison before they are old.

Children “don’t have the brain development, physiologically, psychological or mentally,” DeFabio said. “They are not the same as a person who is 24, 25, 26, 27.” DeFabio said efforts were made to rehabilitate Brandon through Mahoning County Juvenile Court, but Crump’s mother “didn’t do anything to follow up on this.”

Bryant’s proffer continued with details of how the final stages of the robbery unfolded. Bryant got a call from McCoy, who was in the house in Struthers, telling Bryant it was time to commit the robbery, so Bryant drove Crump to Struthers,” Bryant agreed. Crump got out of the car, went in the house, came jogging out two or three minutes later and got back in the car, Bryant said.

“At some point during the ride, Brandon mentions that he may have shot someone, correct?” Yacovone asked. “Yes,” Bryant agreed.

“But you don’t find out the nature or extent of the shooting or even the death of the little boy until the next morning, is that what you told me?” Yacovone asked. “Yes,” Bryant agreed. Crump showed Bryant money in the car, Bryant agreed. Then Bryant dropped Crump off at a home on Dewey Avenue in Youngstown, and Bryant went home to Cassius Avenue and went to sleep, Bryant agreed. It was the early hours of Sept. 21, 2020.

The next day, Bryant learned the extent of the shootings and went to a hotel in Austintown to “lay low,” then turned himself in to the police later that night, Bryant agreed.

Bryant said he had never gotten any of the money from the robbery because he was going to get his share the next day. But that statement was later shown to be untrue. And the lie led to a hearing in which prosecutors asked Judge Anthony D’Apolito of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court to allow prosecutors to rescind Bryant’s plea agreement and recommend a longer sentence. The judge denied the request.

PROFFERS ELSEWHERE

To better understand proffers and their use in criminal cases involving multiple defendants, prosecutors in Trumbull County also were about them.

Longtime prosecutors Chris Becker and Charles Morrow said the term “proffer” suggests to them a procedure mostly used in the federal courts.

“My understanding of how it works federally is the defense attorney will come to you as prosecutor and say ‘Hey, my guy wants to proffer. This is the drug scenario or drug ring or whatever” and then the federal government “can’t use his words against him,” though they ” may develop other evidence,” Becker said.

Morrow said it typically involves a co-defendant cooperating with law enforcement in an investigation in exchange for a sentence. It’s not a confession,” Morrow said. The information the co-defendant provides can then be used against the “target” of the investigation if the target is indicted, Morrow said.

Becker said he believes he has only taken proffers from co-defendants a couple of times over his 35 years as an assistant prosecutor. “We rarely do them up here,” Becker said of the Trumbull County Prosecutor’s Office.

“I think most of our cases here, when there are multiple defendants, we build the case to get all of them,” Becker said. “If we do, rarely, use a co-defendant to testify, that’s only because we know he’s not the main person.”

Morrow said one case where a co-defendant was used as a cooperating witness was the Jermaine McKinney case, where McKinney, then, 26, of Youngstown and Girard, killed a woman and her mother in a home in Newton Township in December 2005 and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

One co-defendant was a woman who drove McKinney to the house where the women were killed. She believed she was taking McKinney there for a robbery, Morrow said.

“She agreed to cooperate. We didn’t call it a proffer,” said Morrow, who was part of the investigation in the case. Two other women involved in the matter also cooperated and testified at the trial.

In another case, Becker prosecuted Eugene Henderson, then 25, and Eugene Cumberbatch, then 27, in 2010 in the killing of a boy and a man in a home in Warren in which a man in the car with the defendants cooperated and testified.

That also was not a proffer “in the classical sense of a federal proffer,” Becker said. “We have co-defendants who sometimes testify against each other,” he said. In such cases, the prosecution will hold off on sentencing the cooperating co-defendant until after they have testified, Morrow added. “Based upon their testimony, we can recommend a sentence,” Morrow said.

“We don’t cut a lot of deals for testimony,” Becker said. “I won’t say never. If they are a co-defendant, a jury instruction is that their testimony should raise grave suspicion. So when you do that, you are already cutting your case off at its knees by saying ‘we cut a deal with this guy,'” Becker said.

“I think we build our cases pretty much working with law enforcement so that there is DNA, cellphone records, cameras everywhere,” Becker said.

Becker said the future of criminal law may involve fewer and fewer situations where co-defendants are used to testify against one another because of the amount of scientific evidence that is becoming available, including DNA, audio, video, phone records, text messages and cellphone-tower locational data. Such data can place a cellphone used by a defendant on a map, showing where the person’s cellphone traveled on specific days at specific times.

Becker added that many of the cases cited by The Innocence Project are ones in which a co-defendant’s testimony was used to convict someone. “That’s probably why we don’t enter into a lot of them. They’re criminals, so why are we going to cut a deal with them?” Becker said.

The Innocence Project works to “free the innocent, prevent wrongful convictions and create fair, compassionate and equitable systems of justice for everyone,” according to its website.