A Ramsey County jury on Friday convicted a St. Paul man of first-degree murder and four other charges in the West Side killing of 26-year-old Casanova Carter, whose funeral was the scene of more gunfire that killed demanded from another man and injured three others. .
Carter was playing a video game at his home in the 700 block of Winslow Avenue when a series of bullets were fired through his window on February 1, 2022 at 10:15 p.m. He was hit by three bullets in the head, face and back. . Investigators found 18 spent casings outside the home, which ballistics revealed came from four guns: three 9mm and one .45 caliber.
Delaquay Levius Williams, 30, and three other men were charged with the murder. Jurors deliberated for a total of about five hours Thursday and Friday before finding Williams guilty of all charges: accessory to first-degree murder; complicity in first and second degree murder for the benefit of the gang; complicity to intentional murder in the second degree; and possessing a firearm while ineligible.
Ramsey County District Judge Timothy Mulrooney set Williams’ sentencing for Jan. 29. The penalty for first-degree murder is a mandatory life sentence.
In the case against Williams, prosecutors relied on testimony from co-defendants Dai’Quan Lamar Husten and Montez Dalray Davis and introduced as evidence video surveillance footage, cellphone data and a DNA swab collected at the murder scene that matched Williams.
Prosecutors said Carter and the fourth co-defendant, Kendall Dvontae Pruitt, recently started “beefing” after Carter called him a “traitor” in a Facebook post.
“We would not be here today if the gang culture of violence in response to disrespect existed,” Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Elizabeth Lamin said Thursday in closing arguments.
Carter and Pruitt had both been part of a federal indictment against Hit Squad gang members and had both served time in federal prison for being a felon in possession of a firearm, according to prosecutors. Williams was associated with the Hilltop Hustlers gang.
“Casanova Carter lived with a target on his back,” Lamin said. “He made some bad choices, but he would have had his whole life to make wiser choices and be a better father, brother and husband.”
At Carter’s funeral on February 21, 2022, Agustin Martinez, 28, of Crystal, was shot and killed and three other people were injured by gunfire outside Simple Traditions at Bradshaw Funeral Home on St. Paul’s West Side.
No murder charges have been filed in Martinez’s death, which police say was gang-related. Four men were sentenced to prison or jail for their roles in the shootout.
In exchange for cooperating with Williams’ case, the prosecutor agreed to drop first-degree murder charges for Husten and Davis.
Williams’ attorney, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Grigsby, told jurors during closing arguments that they should question Husten and Davis’ testimony and consider their motivation for giving it.
Pruitt, 27, of Minneapolis, also spoke to the prosecutor before pleading guilty last year to second-degree intentional homicide. In exchange for the plea, both sides agreed that the grand jury indictment would be dropped. He was sentenced to 34 years in prison.
The murder cases against Davis, 26, of Minneapolis, and Husten, 26, of St. Paul, are still pending.
‘Cover up’
The prosecutor played video surveillance in court Thursday, which showed an unlicensed Nissan Altima driving past Carter’s home and turning onto a neighboring street two minutes before the shooting. Shortly afterwards, four people walked into the garden.
Lamin told jurors that Williams, Davis and Pruitt walked to the north side of the house, where Carter was playing a video game in his window, and Husten went to the front door. “And Montez Davis told you … that Husten and Pruitt all have 9mm and Williams has a .45,” she said. “He said, ‘(Pruitt) starts shooting, then they all shoot.’ ”
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St. Paul police Sgt. Nichole Sipes testified Wednesday that the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension found that DNA taken from the side under Carter’s bedroom window was a significant match to Williams.
Sipes said an FBI analysis of cell phone records matched the co-defendants’ phones in St. Paul before the killing and immediately afterward.
Sipes also testified about what Lamin called Williams’ “cover-up.” Under questioning by Lamin, Sipes said records showed Williams turned off his phone just minutes before the murder and turned it back on a short time afterward. The phone analysis also showed that he began using an app that tracks law enforcement calls around 10:30 p.m., then made the first of what would be several searches for Carter’s sister’s Facebook page.
Later, while using a new phone, Williams sent a message to Carter’s sister. “And we have her testimony about that, right?” Lamin told the jurors. “He tells her to keep her head up. … The only thing we are guaranteed is death.” He would know.”
Shoot sooner
A ballistics analysis of a 9mm Luger pistol that investigators recovered at the scene linked to a shooting in the parking lot of a store on East Fourth Street in St. Paul about four hours before Carter’s murder.
Surveillance footage from the store and the surrounding area shows a Nissan Altima that resembles the suspect’s vehicle at the time the murder was committed. The rear passenger door opens, an arm extends and shoots toward a vehicle in the parking lot.
Surveillance video from a Holiday gas station on Rice Street around 7:15 p.m. shows the same Nissan Altima pulling up and a passenger entering the store and paying for gas. According to the complaints, police identified him as Pruitt and the driver of the car as Davis.
Williams, Davis and Pruitt were charged the following month with aiding and abetting second-degree intentional homicide in Carter’s killing. They were indicted the following July.
Husten admitted during an interview with police in August 2022 that he fired three to four shots at Carter’s front door, Lamin told jurors Thursday.
Fatal shooting in Frogtown
Just over a month after Carter’s murder, Williams allegedly fatally shot 31-year-old Regis Jones in an alley in St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood, according to a complaint in that case charging him with manslaughter.
“Police believe Williams killed (Jones) to prevent him from talking about (Carter’s) murder,” says a 2022 complaint against Williams’ cousin, Dovyion Daquay Glass. Glass, 34, of Roseville, pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact in Jones’ murder and was sentenced in June 2023 to just over 7½ years in prison.
Williams has pleaded not guilty in the case, which is still ongoing.
At the time of both murders, Williams was wanted by police for absconding from his Nov. 10 supervised release from the Minnesota Correctional Facility-St. Cloud regarding convictions in June 2018 in two non-fatal shootings that year.
Prison behavior
Lamin told jurors during closing arguments that Williams’ cover-up continued into 2022 at the Ramsey County Jail, where he was being held for the murders of Carter and Jones.
Williams had a sexual relationship with medical assistant Christine Lynn Satriano through explicit phone calls and letters and used her to spread word throughout the jail that a co-defendant was “talking” to police and prosecutors about Carter’s murder, according to a criminal complaint filed against her in July 2022.
Satriano pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting an offender after the incident in October 2022 after reaching a deal with the prosecutor. She is calling for a deferred prison sentence of two years, during which time she will be on probation. She will be sentenced on Monday.
