Defense argues testimony about eyes insignificant

A trial for a man being held in connection with the March 29, 2006 murder of Carlos Kelly began Wednesday at Boone County Courthouse.

Travis Midgyett, along with his friend Rodney Cunningham, are charged with first-degree robbery and second-degree murder in connection with the killing.

During testimony at the trial, Kelly’s former girlfriend Teisha Moody, 35, said that she, Kelly and two friends were at Kelly’s apartment on Cynthia Drive in Columbia doing drugs and drinking until around 2 a.m. that night. Moody said that after their friends left to get food, Kelly fell asleep while she went to take a shower. When she got out, she said she heard a suspicious noise outside her the apartment and went to lock the door.

When she went to peer out the window blinds, she said she saw a pair of eyes looking back at her. Moments later, Moody said, three men forced their way into the apartment and blindfolded her with duct tape. She said she never saw their faces. She said they then duct taped Kelly and demanded that he tell them where he kept his drugs. The men then took a landscaping timber and struck Kelly on the back of his head, causing his brain to hemorrhage.

When Assistant Boone County Prosecutor Steven Berry asked Moody during the trial to identify the man whose eyes she saw, she pointed to Midgyett.

Public defender Chris Slusher, who is representing Midgyett in the case, said that he thinks Moody’s identification of his client, based on the pair of eyes she saw that night, is insufficient to connect Midgyett with the murder.

“The eye-witness identification of Travis Midgyett from Teisha Moody based on the eyes she saw is something we find incredible, and we hope the jury will see that,” Slusher said.

During cross exmination with Moody, Slusher further pointed out that Moody saw a picture of Midgyett’s face in a newspaper that listed him as a suspect while she was in prison, before a line-up was shown to her.

There was no physical evidence presented on Wednesday that linked Midgyett to the crime scene.

Stacey Bolinger, a DNA criminalist for the Missouri State Highway Patrol, said none of the DNA samples she collected from the apartment matched the DNA samples she took from Midgyett. But, Bolinger said, even though none of the DNA she collected was consistent with Midgyett’s, she said there was evidence collected at the scene that DNA could not be extracted from, and that there were items that couldn’t be used at all because the apartment was had been ransacked.

Berry asked Bolinger if it was possible that the men could have come into the apartment and leave without depositing any DNA, to which she responded yes.

Berry declined to comment outside of court until the case was finished.