Reporter's notebook: Prosecutors say journal showed Vanessa Coleman not upsetBy Jamie Satterfield
Posted November 18, 2012 at 4 a.m.
Having born witness — by her own account — to the death of a University of Tennessee senior kidnapped by strangers, Vanessa Coleman posed a question in her journal.
"How interesting is your life?" she wrote. "I bet it won't compare to mine cuz (sic) I love my life."
Coleman's journal, penned just days after Channon Christian, 21, and Christopher Newsom, 23, were kidnapped, raped, beaten and slain in January 2007, is key evidence for prosecutors Leland Price and TaKisha Fitzgerald as they try to prove Coleman guilty of facilitating the crimes against Christian.
Coleman is standing trial — for the second time — in Knox County Criminal Court on 17 counts of facilitation of kidnapping, rape and murder in connection with the crimes committed against Christian. She was convicted of those counts in May 2010 but acquitted of any role in the crimes committed against Newsom. She received a new trial after a pill scandal involving the judge who presided over that trial but double jeopardy provisions of the law prevent her from being retried in Newsom's death.
Coleman contends she was an 18-year-old girl suddenly confronted with a horrific scenario in which her boyfriend, Letalvis Cobbins, his brother, Lemaricus Davidson, and Cobbins' pal, George Thomas, kidnapped the young couple and threatened her life if she sought to intervene. Cobbins, Thomas and Coleman all lived in Kentucky but were visiting Davidson on the weekend of the slayings.
...snip...
Coleman initially was treated as a witness in the case and even placed in protective custody when media reports of her presence in the house surfaced. She wound up indicted, however, after she admitted — nine interviews later — that she checked Christian's pulse at Davidson's direction and watched him hog-tie Christian just before she was stuffed inside the trash can.
The state rested its case Friday night. The defense launches its proof on Monday. The jury, pulled from Jackson, Tenn., because of publicity surrounding the case in East Tennessee, is being sequestered in a Knoxville hotel.
...more at linkhttp://www.knoxnews.com/news/2012/nov/1 ... not-upset/