YOUNGSTOWN — It’s no secret that television and movies — not to mention tabloid news — love to dramatize certain types of crimes, such as murder.

About 20% of television dramas in 2019 focused on law enforcement, according to a 2020 Hollywood Reporter article.

Mainstream news media also report on murders, especially ones that tap into the public’s imagination, like when they involve a well-known defendant, such as a pastor, or an entirely innocent victim, such as a child or elderly person killed by mistaken identity, or an 18-year-old girl caught in the crossfire of a dispute.

A February 2024 murder trial in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court introduced other issues that drew interest — a blue-collar guy who shot the boyfriend of his estranged wife to death in the victim’s driveway while trying to pick up his daughter and grandson for a family gathering.

It was the case of Campbell man John E. Morgan, now 48, who was convicted in the 2022 death of Daniel Peek Sr., 46, and was sentenced to 18 years to life in prison. His convictions and sentence were upheld in December by the 7th District Court of Appeals.

It was not apparent in the initial reporting of the killing that the case would be the stuff of TV drama. But the first clue was on the first day of Morgan’s trial, when a crew from the A&E network set up its camera in the courtroom of Judge Maureen Sweeney to film an episode of one of its true-crime programs.

Later it was learned that program was part of the A&E’s “Accused: Guilty or Innocent?” series. The program, with a subtitle “Jealous Killer or Fearful Victim?” aired a week ago on the A&E Network and is now available for viewing on the A&E website.

The Reddit website started to receive posts on the episode right away. One of the first ones stated: “Shooting first. Punching first. Shooting while the victim was running away. That’s hard to overcome even though I felt for the guy.” There are many more posts.

THE KILLING

On July 31, 2022, Mary Morgan, estranged wife of John Morgan, and their daughter Kaitlynn, lived with Peek at Peek’s home on Philadelphia Avenue on Youngstown’s South Side. John Morgan lived in Campbell. Peek and John Morgan engaged in a contentious phone call some weeks before the killing that indicated that he and Peek did not like each other, testimony showed.

On July 31, the day Peek died, John Morgan drove to Peek’s house to pick up Kaitlynn and her young son, but Kaitlynn advised her father to pick her and her son up down the street to avoid a confrontation with Peek.

But Morgan pulled into Peek’s driveway anyway, and a confrontation ensued immediately, with Morgan shooting a warning shot into the ground, swinging at Peek’s head in a way that threw Morgan’s gun to the side, Morgan bear hugging Peek to the ground, Peek’s son coming to aid his father, and John Morgan being beaten up.

Then Peek tossed John Morgan to the ground in a most unfortunate way: straight onto the tossed weapon. John Morgan picked it up and fired from the ground as Peek ran toward the back of the house. The gunshot killed Peek.

John Morgan remained at the scene and spoke to police. He maintained he fired his gun in self defense after the beating he took from Peek and his son.

Morgan gave recorded statements to police. Several days later, police obtained dash-cam video from John Morgan’s car, providing a clear picture of the confrontation.

Having an A&E crew covering the trial was a new experience, especially seeing the close relationship between the crew, John Morgan and his two attorneys, Brandon Henderson and Justin Weatherly, of Cleveland.

At one point, the crew filmed from just feet away from John Morgan, his girlfriend, Megan Owens, and John Morgan’s attorneys as they talked in a corridor of the courthouse.

When the A&E dramatization aired, it also provided other behind-the-scenes footage, including meetings John Morgan had with his attorneys after he bonded out of jail. Morgan and his attorneys candidly discussed the evidence and how it might be perceived by jurors.

Such conversations would almost never be heard by the public under normal circumstances because attorneys have an obligation to work on behalf of their client to the best of their ability and not reveal details that might hurt their client’s case.

For instance, the program included discussions between the attorneys of text messages Kaitlynn Morgan wrote after the killing. She was a witness to the killing and expressed support for her father and disdain for things Peek had said and done.

But the program also followed the attorneys when they went to an interview with Kaitlynn Morgan and learned that she was now seemingly changing her story, and her testimony might now be more harmful to her father than helpful.

Those concerns were realized at the trial, when Henderson asked Kaitlynn, the first witness, about a text message she had written saying that Peek “attacked (Morgan), so my dad shot at” Peek Sr. Kaitlynn agreed that Henderson had read the text correctly.

“So you would agree with me that on that day, you saw Daniel Peek assaulting your father?”

She replied, “I did not see their interaction.”

“But you could see Danny’s arm swinging onto your dad, correct?”

“I could also see my dad swinging at” Peek, she said.

Henderson repeated the question, and Kaitlynn answered that she saw the fighting “barely.”

After a sidebar discussion between Sweeney and the attorneys, Sweeney told Kaitlynn outside of the hearing of the jury that she was under oath, not to “tell a different story now, as opposed to your text messages” or she could be held in contempt of court.

The next day, Kaitlynn testified that she did not hold the opinions written in the text messages now, saying it was only how she felt “at the time.”

The A&E broadcast also shows Morgan’s attorneys at their offices in Cleveland watching Morgan’s dash-cam video of the killing. The attorneys were evaluating what they were seeing from an evidentiary point of view.

Peek could be seen coming down from his porch in a menacing way toward Morgan shortly after Morgan pulled into Peek’s driveway.

“He’s clearly getting into a fighting position. He’s itching for a fight,” one of the attorneys said of Peek.

Morgan could be seen emerging from his car and firing his gun into the ground. “John said Dan threatened to kill him as he was coming off the porch,” one of the attorneys said.

“But he didn’t have a gun and John does,” one of the attorneys stated.

“It looks like he tries to hit him, but throws the gun away,” one attorney said of Morgan’s initial physical contact with Peek. “He’s throwing the first punch, though. And now (Morgan) is like jumping on him and bear hugs him with his weight.”

As the recording continues, one of the attorneys noted, “And then we have character No. 3 right here. God, he hit him right in the back of the head with his foot,” one attorney said of Peek’s son, who came down from the porch and kicked Morgan. “That’s two-on-one, and they are double teaming him. He’s in trouble,” one attorney said of Morgan.

When the video ended, Weatherly said, “Brandon, if they just watch the video, and we don’t provide them with any other information, he’s sunk.”

At the trial, defense witnesses talked about an incident that happened to John Morgan several years earlier in which Morgan was the victim of a drive-by shooting that caused him to install the dash cam in his car. Witnesses also testified to Morgan’s serious health issues, which they said had greatly reduced his ability to defend himself in a fight.

A defense witness, former Akron police officer Timothy Dimoff, testified at the trial, narrating as he watched the dash-cam video with jurors. During the crucial moments when Morgan fired his gun, Dimoff said, “With all of the beating, kicking and stomping, in my opinion, I don’t believe (Morgan) could understand, comprehend what was going on. He was in total adrenaline rush, survival mode, picks up the gun and fires it. I don’t think he even knew where Dan was,” Dimoff said.

NEW FILINGS

Meanwhile, Youngstown area attorney Rhys Cartwright-Jones recently filed a motion and affidavit with the 7th District Court of Appeals asking the court to reopen the appeal it decided in December, arguing that Morgan received ineffective assistance from his attorneys. The appeals panel ruled against Morgan’s appeal of his convictions and sentence.

The March 10 and 11 filings ask the appeals panel to examine four issues that Cartwright-Jones says indicate the need for another review.

One is that Morgan’s attorneys did not raise an objection to the self-defense instruction Sweeney gave to jurors, despite Morgan’s “explicit instructions to do so.”

“Counsel’s inaction deprived Morgan of preserving a potentially reversible error” regarding jury instructions, and “deprived Mr. Morgan of the opportunity to argue that the erroneous instruction undermined his claim of self-defense,” the filing states.

It also argues that Morgan’s attorneys should have filed a motion to suppress the dash-cam video evidence. It should have been suppressed because the dash-cam “metadata reveals a critical discrepancy that counsel did not contest,” the filing states.

The affidavit was filed by Owens, who stated that she has “direct knowledge of the facts set forth in this affidavit” and followed the Morgan case closely.

The affidavit states that Morgan’s attorneys “continuously insisted on remaining on” as John Morgan’s attorneys in the appeal to the 7th District Court of Appeals, “despite my concerns and John Morgan’s repeated misgivings about their performance.”

PROSECUTION

On Tuesday, Mahoning County Assistant Prosecutor Kristie Weibling filed a response to Cartwright-Jones’ request to reopen the appeal, stating that nothing in the Cartwright-Jones filing “proves a genuine issue regarding his claim of ineffective assistance of appellate counsel.” To be successful, the claim “must prove that counsel’s performance fell below an objective standard of reasonableness,” she stated.

Cartwright-Jones argued that Morgan’s attorneys should have objected to the self-defense jury instructions in the case on the grounds that they were misleading, but the appeals court already “fully considered and rejected” that argument, Weibling stated.

“Moreover, (the appeals court) determined that even if there was an error in the instructions, (Morgan’s) self-defense claim failed as it was not supported by the record.”

As to the argument that Morgan’s attorneys should have sought suppression of the dash-cam video, Weibling stated that the defense “only makes generic statements regarding the metadata associated with the video,” but “the record is void of any evidence supporting” the allegation. “A reviewing court may not add material that is not part of the trial court record and then decide the appeal based upon this new material,” Weibling argued.

Furthermore, the decision to keep the dash-cam video in the trial was a “tactical decision,” and such a decision “should not be second-guessed, even if after the fact the same appears questionable,” Weibling stated, referencing case law.

REACTION

When Owens was asked her opinion of the finished A&E program, she said, “I’ve been watching ‘Accused’ for the last few years, and think it does help viewers see what actually happens in the courtroom, and not what the media portrays.”

She said the program was “beneficial for John because the public now sees how dishonest the state and their witnesses were.” She said she wonders “Why weren’t they found in contempt?”

Owens said she also read the response from the Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office to her affidavit and a defense request for John Morgan’s appeal to be reopened.

She said the filing is an example of how prosecutors can “pull stuff from thin air.” She was referring to a section of the filing that alleges John Morgan’s dash-cam video “showed Kaitlynn (Morgan) and her son near the corner and far away from (Peek’s) house as (John Morgan) drove towards it. (John Morgan) claimed that he did not see them.”

Owens stated in an email: “Where exactly does (the video) show John driving past (Kaitlynn Morgan and her son) and going to the house?”