Baton Rouge man found not guilty in retrial of fatal drive-by crash | Courts

Jarvis Lee Bowie sat between two of his defense attorneys in a courtroom in Baton Rouge on Tuesday evening.

When the verdict was read, finding him not guilty of premeditated murder, he let out a loud cry, collapsed into the arms of his lawyer and thanked him for his release.

The acquittal was the final shot in a five-day retrial at the 19th Judicial District Courthouse, ending a nearly four-year saga that included a previous trial last year that abruptly ended in a mistrial.

A jury of seven women and five men deliberated for 80 minutes before finding 24-year-old Bowie not guilty of the murder of Clarence Augustus on December 9, 2020. If convicted, he faced a life sentence in prison.

Moments after the verdict was announced, an overjoyed Bowie left the courthouse, surrounded by his overjoyed family members who had sat in the courtroom for most of the week-long trial.

“A heavy burden was lifted from me and I felt so much relief,” he said of his acquittal. “It is a relief for me to have shown the world that I did nothing and I am glad that the world has finally seen my true innocence.”

Bowie thanked his lead attorney, Alex Laird, who had questioned the testimony of two key state witnesses.

“We believe the jury got it right, and that's why I don't think the deliberations took very long,” Laird said. “Because the state should have dismissed this charge from the beginning. These were completely unreliable witnesses, and the jury recognized that immediately.”

Prosecutors tried to prove that Bowie and another gunman in a red Honda Accord pulled up next to Augustus, 36, who was sitting in his Lexus parked outside his apartment complex in the 200 block of South Street. Both gunmen fired at Augustus through the Honda's passenger windows before he sped away. Police later found the vehicle abandoned and burned in a vacant lot in the 1800 block of Colorado Street.

The state's case relied on eyewitness testimony from Augustus' mother, Stephanie Cofield, and his sister, Shardei Cofield. Both women identified Bowie as one of the men they saw hanging out the window of the Honda after shots were fired. Stephanie Cofield testified that she saw Bowie with a gun in his hand and told jurors she immediately recognized him from the neighborhood. The mother and sister said that as they ran to his car, Augustus told them, “Jarvis and the others shot me,” before he died.

At the scene, Stephanie Cofield told police she knew Bowie drove a red Honda Accord that belonged to his mother, but defense attorneys presented evidence that the vehicle used in the shooting had actually been stolen weeks before the shooting of a woman in north Baton Rouge.

Prosecutors showed jurors a video of Bowie's interrogation after U.S. Marshals searched his Baton Rouge apartment in January 2021. He told investigators he never sat in a red Honda, but drove a white Honda Accord. Bowie also claimed in the interrogation video that he was sick and asleep for most of the day of the shooting, and stressed that he never left his apartment near South Sherwood Forest Boulevard.

Prosecutors, however, undermined that alibi with GPS evidence that showed Bowie's cellphone was near the homicide scene – nearly 10 miles from his home – within minutes of the shooting.

noted that the state had no DNA evidence, fingerprints, video surveillance equipment, or even a suspected murder weapon that could link Bowie to the shooting.

“He told you he wouldn't be anywhere near South Baton Rouge, and he was,” Assistant District Attorney Kaitlyn Mistretta said during her closing argument. “A life is lost. Clarence Augustus is dead because of this man. So I ask you to put aside the fact that he was 20 years old at the time. Put aside the fact that this is a life sentence. Put aside your sympathy and think about the facts.”

Bowie's legal team first undermined the credibility of Stephanie and Shardei Cofield by presenting evidence from their ongoing criminal cases at the 19th JDC. Shardei, 33, has an open domestic violence case, while Stephanie is currently charged with obstruction of justice and theft in two separate cases.

Stephanie Cofield said prosecutors never offered her any relief in exchange for her testimony in the Bowie trial in any of those ongoing cases. An assistant district attorney who led the prosecution of Shardei Cofield said she was never offered anything for her testimony either.

Shardei Cofield testified during Bowie's original trial in June 2023. District Judge Gail Horne Ray declared the trial void four days into the trial after Stephanie Cofield claimed Bowie fired the shots the day before the fatal shooting in Augustus. Ray ruled that the jury testimony was “highly biased” and would have denied Bowie a fair trial.

Prosecutors said they were unable to locate Shardei for the retrial; jurors read transcripts of her testimony from 14 months ago. Stephanie Cofield said grief over Augustus' death sent her into a downward spiral after last year's trial and she no longer even knew where her daughter was.

Laird called the two women “blind witnesses” and asked how they could positively identify Bowie as one of the shooters, who was in a car that sped past at nightfall on a dimly lit residential street peppered with bullets.

“You are trying to send a young man to prison to rot and die based on the testimony of a completely unreliable blind witness,” the defense attorney said in his closing argument.

He later questioned Stephanie Cofield's memory of the shooting and even suggested that she suffered from vision problems, as evidenced by her difficulty reading one of the pieces of evidence during questioning on the first day of testimony.

“When there is so much at stake and she is their star witness sending this man to prison to rot and die, that is unacceptable,” he told jurors. “You have seen enough of what has come out of the witness box and you should ignore everything she has said.”