Staff photo / Ed Runyan A deputy handcuffs Andre K. Bailey and prepares to take him from the courtroom Monday after Bailey was convicted of aggravated murder and other offenses in the Oct. 17 shooting death of Reynaldo Hernandez, 24, at Bailey’s home on Bott Street on Youngstown’s East Side.

YOUNGSTOWN — Apparently it was more important to jurors that they saw Andre K. Bailey’s actions on video at the time Reynaldo Hernandez, 24, was killed in Bailey’s East Side home in October and not as important that cell phones went missing.

Visiting Judge W. Wyatt McKay announced late Monday that a jury had found Bailey “guilty on all counts and all specifications,” including aggravated murder. It means Bailey, 40, will be sentenced to life in prison at 9 a.m. April 14. Bailey will be eligible for parole after 20 or 25 years or no chance of parole.

In closing arguments early Monday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, Mahoning County Assistant Prosecutor John Juhasz said Bailey’s surveillance videos showing the inside and outside of Bailey’s home provided the evidence jurors would need to find Bailey guilty of aggravated murder, murder, aggravated robbery, tampering with evidence and being a felon in possession of a firearm.

That contrasted with the closing arguments of defense attorney Walter Madison, who asked jurors if they could make the important decision regarding Bailey’s guilt without knowing what was in two cell phones that were found located at the scene but later disappeared.

Madison also argued that the prosecution had not proven that Bailey acted with “prior calculation and design,” which was a required element of one of the aggravated murder counts.

Madison also wanted it to be clear that not even prosecutors or the police believe that Bailey was the shooter. One of several other men identified as being in the home was the shooter, Madison said. And Madison tried to convince jurors that the state failed to show that Bailey was “complicit” with the others.

PROSECUTORS

Juhasz focused on the video footage in his remarks. It showed Hernandez inside the home with a blood stain on the back of his shirt shortly after he arrived there Oct. 17, Juhasz said. It shows Bailey “with a gun, pointing it” inside the home. It does not show Hernandez being shot, Juhasz said.

The footage shows “brooms, they’ve got mops, they’re moving furniture, they’re rolling up rugs, they’re using bleach,” Juhasz said of the men in the home trying to remove evidence of the killing. It also shows Hernandez on the driveway collapsing, creating a pool of blood.

Juhasz said it is evident that Hernandez was shot in the home because one video shows Hernandez on the back porch of Bailey’s home without an injury. “You see Reynaldo running through the living room, and you can see the blood on the back of his shirt already, so we know he was shot,” Juhasz said.

“And you see him going down the driveway,” Juhasz said of the video. Juhasz said Hernandez was in the driveway about 10 minutes before men put him in a car and drove away. Someone finished cleaning up the blood 90 seconds before the first police officers arrived, Juhasz said.

The bag Hernandez brought into the home with him was not recovered. “That’s tampering with evidence,” Juhasz said, mentioning one of the charges in Bailey’s indictment, as well as Bailey being a felon in possession of a firearm because the video shows him with a gun.

Bailey was still at the home when officers arrived. Juhasz said it was because Bailey was wearing an electronically monitored ankle bracelet as a result of a criminal case in another county.

Officers responded to Bott Street after a 911 call from an Amazon delivery driver who heard gunshots coming from inside the home as he delivered a package on the front porch.

Juhasz said Bailey first told police that he was in his bathroom and heard gunshots but found nothing “awry” when he walked out of the bathroom. Juhasz said the videos from Bailey’s home, which were provided to police a week later, contradicted those comments.

A detective told Bailey on Oct. 17 that police “know there was a black car in the driveway. We know there was a body in the driveway,” Juhasz said. Bailey was arrested one week later, charged with murder and tampering with evidence, after police obtained “all of those videos.”

DEFENSE ARGUMENTS

Madison’s closing arguments focused on two cell phones that were photographed by Youngstown police at the crime scene that disappeared while police were investigating.

“There were two phones on the deck outside,” Madison said. “There were two more phones in the bedroom. There is nothing you can do today that is not publicly captured on your phone.”

For the prosecution to prove that Bailey took part in the planning of the killing, Bailey would have needed to use a phone, Madison said.

“So how does he communicate with people to plan this murder if there is no conversation? If there was a conversation, it more than likely occurred with one of these phones. And how unfair is it to have two phones just disappear?”

Madison said the phones may have contained information that showed that Bailey was ordering a pizza, not planning a murder. “Ladies and gentlemen, that is something we will never know. That is not because of him,” he said of Bailey. “That is because of the police.”

Madison said one thing obvious to everyone is that Bailey is not “the shooter” in this case. “Their own detective said he’s not the shooter.” Instead, the prosecution accuses Bailey of aggravated murder as a “complicitor,” meaning he “aided and abetted” the person or persons who shot and killed Hernandez, Madison said.

Vincent Marbley, 59; and Eddie Winphrie, 41, both face the same charges as Bailey but have not been found and are not in custody.

To find Bailey guilty of participating in the murder with “prior calculation and design,” prosecutors have to show that Bailey “planned” the killing, Madison said. But “just because he is there at his house, that doesn’t mean he had a plan to kill anybody or rob anybody or murder anybody.”

Madison said there was no evidence that Bailey “was a participant in a murder plan just because he participated in cleaning up his house.”

Hernandez’ body was found Oct. 18 in Mount Hope Veterans Memorial Cemetery on Youngstown’s East Side, not far from Bott Street.

Lynn Maro, who won the Nov. 5 election to become Mahoning County prosecutor, said after the verdict that she credited the Youngstown Police Department and prosecutors for their hard work on the case.

She said the life sentence Bailey will get is consistent with a campaign pledge she made to try as often as possible to get a life prison sentence for someone responsible for taking a life. “Whatever sentence he picks will have that life tail,” she said. McKay heard the case for Judge R. Scott Krichbaum, who McKay said was not available.