A Baltimore jury has convicted a 27-year-old Baltimore woman in the shooting death of her boyfriend, who was found slumped in the doorway of the house where they were living on Knottwood Court in March, according to city prosecutors.
This was the second time that Juanita Robinson had been charged with murder. In June 2004, she pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and received a 10-year suspended sentence for stabbing her twin sister's boyfriend, Derrick Colbert, 16, in the heart after an argument in their apartment.
At the time of sentencing, Colbert's mother told Circuit Judge Kaye A. Allison that she didn't want Robinson "going to jail for the rest of her life." Robinson's defense attorney told Allison that Colbert and Robinson's twin sister, Donita, had a history of domestic violence and that Juanita had become frustrated with her sister's unwillingness to press charges against Colbert.
In the more recent case, Juanita Robinson told police that she and Andre McBride had been arguing over his drug use and behavior but that she was in another room at the time she heard shots, a claim the jury rejected.
The case, however, nearly fell apart in the days before trial as prosecutor Cynthia Banks and Baltimore detectives tried and eventually located a key witness - the first police officer on the scene - and persuaded him to testify. The officer, Andre Godfrey, who left the department last year, was reluctant to assist the state but said in an interview that Banks repeatedly implored him to "think about the [victim's] family."
Circuit Judge John C. Themelis is scheduled to sentence Robinson for first-degree murder on April 23. Robinson is still on probation in the voluntary manslaughter case and has a felony drug case pending.