CLEVELAND: A jury recommended Saturday that a man be put to death for killing three people and wounding three others last year at a suburban Cleveland barbershop in what authorities described as a gang-related dispute.
Earlier this month, the same jury had convicted Douglas Shine Jr., 21, of aggravated murder and dozens of other charges related to the shootings at Chalk Linez barbershop, in Warrensville Heights, and his role in killing an eyewitness.
Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Joan Synenberg must now decide whether to impose the death sentence or give Shine life in prison with no chance of parole. She scheduled formal sentencing for Dec. 5.
Messages left Saturday with Shine’s attorneys were not immediately returned.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty said his office respected the jurors’ decision.
“The outcome here guarantees that Douglas Shine Jr. will never again be free to kill, and shows that this community will not tolerate the indiscriminate gang murder of innocents,” McGinty said in a statement Saturday.
Defense attorneys on Wednesday began laying out their case for why Shine should not die by lethal injection.
A psychologist who examined Shine and reviewed hundreds of pages of school, jail, prison and social services records had testified that he had no clear role model growing up.
Psychologist Robert Kaplan said Shine’s mother spent four months in jail when he was 6 months old and frequently abused him. He said Shine first went to juvenile detention center when he was 10 on a burglary charge and was pressured to join a street gang when he was 14 and transferred to a youth prison.
During a murder trial that spanned more than two months, prosecutors and witnesses recounted for jurors a story of revenge and cold-blooded violence wrought by Shine and others.
Prosecutors said Shine went to Chalk Linez on Feb. 5 of last year to kill 23-year-old Walter Lee Barfield, a rival gang member who worked at the shop, shooting him 19 times. He also killed 32-year-old owner William Gonzalez and 31-year-old Brandon White, a customer who went to the shop every Thursday for a haircut and to play video games. Two men and a woman were also struck and wounded that night.
Shine’s mission to kill Barfield was rooted in a feud between the Heartless Felons, Shine’s gang and a rival gang called Loyal Always, prosecutors said.
Three jurors were dismissed and replaced by alternates during the trial, including a woman who told authorities a member of Shine’s family approached her daughter outside a school to talk about the case.