The Money Has to Be His

Six years ago today, at about noon on November 11, 2020, Melvin Noble was shot to death on Interstate 35 in Dallas. The world knew him as Mo3. The man who fired the rifle, Kewon White, has already been convicted of capital murder. This morning, on the anniversary to the day, twelve Dallas County jurors go into a deliberation room to decide whether Markies Conway, the rapper Yella Beezy, paid for that killing.

They carry one sentence back there with them. The judge read it to them late Tuesday afternoon, and everything the lawyers said for the next two hours was aimed at it. The State has to prove that Conway caused Mo3's death by employing Kewon White to murder him for remuneration or the promise of remuneration, "namely United States currency from the defendant." Read that sentence to the end. The money has to be his.

That is the spine of the last two days of this trial, and it is where I'm going to keep coming back. Monday, Day 10, was the end of the State's case: a lead detective finishing four days on the stand, a fight over his phone calls with the State's own witness, the shooter's internet searches, and a third refusal by the judge to let the jury hear the shooter's words from jail. Then the State rested. Tuesday, Day 11, the defense put on its whole case by mid-afternoon, Conway did not testify, the judge read the charge, and both sides argued the case to the jury in a single afternoon. One thing never changed across both days. The State still has no call, no text and no witness putting Conway in contact with Kewon White, and the State said so itself in its last argument.

I think the State proved that Mo3 was murdered for hire. The jury's question is narrower: whether this record lets twelve people say, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the hire was Conway's and the money was Conway's. Here is how they got to that room.

What Texas actually has to prove

Start with the law, because the charge Judge Chika Anyiam read on Tuesday is narrower than most people following this case expect.

Murder in Texas is intentionally or knowingly causing a death. Capital murder, the charge here, is a murder committed by employing another person to do it for remuneration or the promise of remuneration. Remuneration just means payment. A promise of payment is enough. The State told the jury, correctly, that six of them could believe Conway paid and six could believe he only promised, and the verdict could still be guilty, because the jurors do not have to agree on which.

Then the law of parties, which is how the State gets past the biggest hole in its case. A person is criminally responsible for someone else's crime if, intending to promote or assist it, he solicits, encourages, directs or aids that person. The jury was told it can convict Conway "acting alone or as a party." So if the jury believes Conway worked the hire through Jerry Johnson, the barbershop owner the State calls the middleman, the law treats it as if Conway hired White himself. That matters because, as Detective Eric Barnes admitted again on Monday, there was never any phone contact between Conway and White. Not once.

What the charge does not include is just as important. There is no lesser offense. A lesser offense is the smaller crime inside the bigger one, the step a jury can take when it believes part of the State's case and doubts the rest. There is no murder option on this verdict form. The form has two lines: guilty of capital murder as charged, or not guilty. A juror who thinks Conway wanted Mo3 dead but has a real doubt about the money has one honest place to put a check mark, and it is the second line. The charge conference was held off our feed, so I can't tell you who asked for what.

And the charge put Theodore Thomas on a leash. Thomas is the State's Day 5 witness, Conway's childhood friend, who told a grand jury that he heard Jerry Johnson ask Yella Beezy for the money Johnson had fronted, and then told this jury under immunity that the story was a lie. The judge told the jurors that everything Thomas said to the grand jury can be used only to decide whether Thomas is believable, "not to be considered for any other purpose, including as evidence of the defendant's guilt." The only account in this trial of a conversation about paying for Mo3's murder is not evidence the jury may use to convict.

Keep those four things in your head as you read the rest: payment or promise, through a middleman, no lesser, and Thomas's story off the table as proof. Everything else in these two days was fought inside that box.

Hours on the phone, and not one note

Monday morning picked up where Friday left off, with Toby Shook cross-examining Detective Barnes. Shook is one of the best-known defense lawyers in Texas, and he spent the first part of the morning on Devin Brown, the man the State says found Mo3's location for the shooter. Two more cash videos from Brown's own accounts went in. Barnes agreed that Brown and White swapped phone numbers around November 9, 2020, and that the heavy traffic between them came on the 10th and 11th. That's the defense's alternative in one line: the shooter and the locator connect two days before the killing, and neither of them has any line to Conway.

Then Shook turned the case's own subpoena power on the detective. Earlier this year the defense subpoenaed every text, email and call Barnes had with witnesses, and what came back was a record of Barnes and Theodore Thomas. Thomas got out of federal custody in February 2025 into a federal drug-diversion program. Over the next year and a half he texted the lead detective about money for a place to stay, about "the program," about a car after a wreck ("Hey Barnes, I really need a car"), about trouble with an ex-girlfriend who had called his federal probation officer.

CLIP · DAY 10 Detective Confirms Theodore Thomas Texted Him 'I Really Need a Car' After a Wreck

And then the calls. Shook read them one at a time from Thomas's own carrier records, and the jury heard the same two words after each one. Forty-two minutes in June 2025: no notes. Twenty-four minutes: no. An hour and twenty-two minutes in the middle of a September afternoon, right when Thomas was in trouble with his probation officer: no. An hour and forty-one minutes in June of this year, a few months before White's trial and this one: no. Another spring of calls from a second carrier added up to close to three hours one way and more than an hour the other. Hours of conversation with the State's immunized witness, and not a word of it written down.

Shook asked the question the whole stretch was built for. Had Barnes ever spent anything like that time on the phone with a released drug-conspiracy witness before a trial? "No, this was the first time."

CASE STORY PT 38 · DAY 10 Detective Admits He Took No Notes on Hours of Calls With Theodore Thomas

Here's where I land on that. A detective is allowed to talk to his witnesses. He's allowed to keep a frightened witness close. What he owes the process is a record of it, because the other side has a right to know what the State's key witness was told, promised or asked while the case was being built. The State's answer on redirect was real and I'll give it its due. Barnes said his number is "plastered all across the internet," that a homicide detective answers when people call ("When I'm not in the street, I'm on the phone"), and that the calls clustered around nights when a man tied to the shooting went live with a YouTube blogger for hours and aired who the State's witness was. That's a scared witness calling the cop who knows his name is out there. I believe some of that is exactly what it was.

But I'd ask the State this. If the calls were about safety, why is there nothing on paper saying so? A two-line note after each call would have answered Shook's cross before he ever stood up. Without one, the jury has the detective's memory of what was said, years later, about the one witness who swore to the grand jury that Conway had to pay and then swore to this jury that he made it up. The State also pulled one useful thread out of those records: on March 20, 2025, the day Conway was arrested, Conway was on the phone with Thomas. It's a small point, but it cuts against the picture of Thomas as the detective's creature. Both things are true at once, and the jury gets to weigh both.

What the jury was not allowed to see, on both sides

This is a trial where a lot of the fighting happened over what the jury would never see, so let me put the rulings from these two days in one place, in both directions, because that's the honest way to judge whether a trial is fair.

The defense lost two. Shook tried to show that White's gun turned up in the national ballistics network at other Dallas shootings, including one in Oak Cliff on November 9, 2020, two days before Mo3 was killed, and that nobody ever sent those casings to a firearms examiner. The judge kept out the reports themselves as hearsay and preliminary expert work a detective can't sponsor, but let the jury hear the substance through Barnes: nine hits, three other scenes, none checked. Then Shook offered White's other 2020 case, a shooting involving a woman he was dating, to show White was "prone to violence." The judge's answer was short. White has been convicted of murder; we know he's violent; what is the relevance? Sustained.

The State lost more. That afternoon it tried to show a photograph from White's phone, a gun he sent to someone at 8:45 on the night of the killing. The judge asked the State the same question she'd asked the defense, and when the prosecutor said the State still had to prove White was the killer, the judge said, "We already know that." Sustained. The State's timeline chart, a one-page summary of the calls and phone locations, was kept out of the jury room for the second time as an improper summary, allowed only to be shown on the screen. And the big one: for the third time in this trial, the judge refused to let the jury hear Kewon White's November 23, 2020 call from the Titus County jail, the call Barnes said gives "a full picture" of what White was paid. The State argued the defense opened the door by cross-examining about the $9,670 found on White. The judge sustained the objection anyway. The argument happened while our audio was dead, so I can't tell you what was said, only the ruling.

CASE STORY PT 39 · DAY 10 Detective Says Mo3's Shooter Was Paid More Than the $9,670 Police Found

I think the jail-call ruling was right, and I'll say why. That call is a convicted killer, who will never be cross-examined in this courtroom, talking about money. If it names a price and a payer, it's the most powerful evidence of remuneration in the case, and it can't be tested. The rules say that when evidence like that is more likely to unfairly sway a jury than to help it find the truth, the judge can keep it out. She did, three times, and she was consistent about it. What I'd point out is the effect: the State has to prove the money element without the shooter's own words about who paid him. Everything you'll read below about rubber bands and crisp hundreds is the State working around that hole.

The pattern across the whole trial is worth naming. The judge kept out the State's summaries, the gun photo and the jail call, and kept out the defense's attempt to paint White as a violent man on his own account. She let in the State's records and the shooter's own searches, and the defense's phone records, travel records and family. I don't see a thumb on the scale in either direction. I see a judge who held both sides to the evidence rules, and a record that is cleaner for it.

Eight days before: "Yella Beezy net worth"

Monday afternoon the State brought the strongest new evidence it put in after Day 9, and it came from the shooter's own phone.

First the redirect fixed a date. Barnes agreed that the only time in November 2020 that the phones of Conway, Kewon White and Jerry Johnson come together is November 3, at or near Jerry Johnson's barbershop. Then the State put up the searches pulled from a white iPhone taken from the Ramona house, the trap house where White slept. On November 3, 2020, the same day, that phone searched "Yella Beezy net worth," again and again, then "Trapboy Freddy net worth," three times, then "Yella Beezy net worth 2020, height, age, bio and real name." On November 5, "Yella Beezy net worth" again.

CLIP · DAY 10 Jury Hears Mo3's Shooter Googled Yella Beezy's Net Worth Days Before the Murder

Trapboy Freddy is Devarius Moore, the other rapper the State calls a financer of this murder, and the man its own lawyers have called an unindicted co-conspirator. Eight days before Mo3 was killed, on the one day the three phones met, the man who would pull the trigger was looking up how much money the two alleged financers had. That is the closest the State has come in this trial to a promise before the killing, and I don't think anyone can wave it away.

The other searches told the same story from the other side of the killing. On November 20, a little after 4:30 in the afternoon, a TMZ story about Mo3 being shot in Dallas, with Yella Beezy's name in what White was reading. "Mo3 killer," on the 20th and the 21st. Page after page of new cars. Recording studios. On November 12, the day after the killing, a Draco, a short rifle built like a pistol, which lines up with what Cedric Bradley told the jury on Day 7, that White wanted a gun he could hold in one hand "like he used on that rapper" on the highway. And on November 22, Manhattan Jewelers, the store where White would spread rubber-banded cash on the counter that afternoon.

CLIP · DAY 10 Jury Sees Kewon White's Searches for Mo3 Killer and a TMZ Story Naming Beezy

The defense's reading is the obvious one: a young man who wanted to be a rapper looked up famous rappers. That's a fair point in the abstract. What it doesn't explain is the date. You can believe White was a fan who Googled Yella Beezy, and still notice he did it on the day his phone sat near Conway's and Johnson's, and that he looked up Trapboy Freddy in the same sitting. On this record, that's a fact pointing toward the State, and the jury is allowed to weigh it that way.

A PMG ring, and whose ring it was

The State used the same afternoon to answer the defense's picture of White as an outsider. From White's Instagram, a video he posted from Conway's Houston concert on October 31, 2020: White's arm, a diamond watch, a ring on his pinky, and at nine seconds a piece reading PMG, Profit Music Group, Conway's label. Barnes said nobody else in this case was signed to PMG, and that the voice in the background of the video is Conway's. Under a photo of his jewelry that night, White replied to a compliment: "that's Yella Beezy shit."

CLIP · DAY 10 Jury Sees PMG on Mo3's Shooter's Ring and Hears It Was Conway's Record Label CASE STORY PT 40 · DAY 10 Detective Identifies Conway's Voice in Mo3's Shooter's Instagram Video

Shook's recross was one of the better ten minutes the defense had all trial. The State's proof that the jewelry was Conway's, Barnes agreed, is White's own comment, "because that's what he said." But Thomas told Barnes back in 2022 that he lent White his chain for a video shoot. Then Shook put up photographs of Thomas himself: a pinky ring with the same letters and design as the one on White's hand, and a similar watch. Barnes wouldn't say it was the same ring. He did agree it was the same letters.

So the PMG piece in the shooter's video might belong to the cooperator, not the rapper. I think the jury will take the PMG evidence for what it does prove: White was in Conway's circle at Conway's show eleven days before the killing, close enough to wear the label's jewelry. That goes to how White and Conway's world connect. It doesn't put money in White's hand.

No call, no text, ever

Before the State rested, Shook made sure the jury heard the fact the defense has built its whole case on, from the State's own lead detective. No phone-to-phone contact between Conway and Kewon White, ever. No film of the two of them talking at the Houston show. Conway drove to Houston in a separate car. White had reached out to Conway on Instagram, Barnes added, which is not the same as Conway reaching back. And Thomas had told Barnes that Conway did not even know White.

CLIP · DAY 10 Detective Admits No Phone Contact Between Conway and Mo3's Shooter Kewon White

The State's answer to that gap is Jerry Johnson, and on redirect it walked the jury through Sunday, November 22, 2020, in order, the State's case on paper. Just after midnight, Johnson to Conway: what's up with your people? Conway: hitting him now. Later, Johnson warns that if someone jerks them around tomorrow, there will be trouble (the words are rough on our recording). Conway: "Nah, I'm gonna get that shit done." At 3:05 that morning, Conway to Moore: meet up tomorrow, I fly out at 3. Moore: "overstood." That afternoon Conway sends Moore an address in Irving, and their phones meet near a Clay Cooley dealership at 4:22. At 4:57 Conway sends Johnson his own home address in Frisco, and by 6:11 their phones are together there. At 7:19 White calls Johnson, and Johnson heads south to the Ramona house.

CASE STORY PT 41 · DAY 10 Detective Reads Conway's 'I Fly Out at 3' Text and the Address Sent Next

Heard all at once, that sequence is powerful. Johnson asks about "your people," Conway promises to get it done, Conway meets the man the State calls his co-financer, then Johnson comes to Conway's house, then Johnson goes straight to the shooter. Nothing in it names White, Mo3, a killing or a dollar amount. That's the defense's answer, and it has been since Day 8. I'd add one thing. The State's own chart of November 10 and 11, the days of the murder, shows every one of Devin Brown's calls going down to the shooter or sideways to Johnson. None of them goes to Conway. The State's case for the hire lives entirely in the days after the killing.

When the detective's opinion becomes the evidence

There's a process point in Monday's redirect that I don't want to lose, because it's the kind of thing that decides appeals.

Over and over, the State asked Detective Barnes to tell the jury what the evidence meant. Did he believe the $9,670 was all White was paid? No. Based on his investigation, were Conway and Moore the ones who paid for the murder? "Correct." Was the November 22 meeting at Ramona "the meetup regarding the money"? Yes. On the last questions before the State passed the witness, he agreed there had to be a promise of payment to White to kill Mo3, and that the payment or the promise came from Moore and from Conway.

A police officer can tell a jury what he did and what he found. Whether the defendant is guilty is the jury's question, not his. When a detective with twenty years on the job says "Conway paid" from the witness stand, the risk is that the jury hears a conclusion instead of evidence. The judge did warn Barnes, partway through the afternoon, not to give an opinion on an ultimate issue in the case. Several of these answers came before that warning, and some drew no objection I could hear. I'd ask whether the warning came late. It's in the record either way, and if there's a conviction, I'd expect an appellate lawyer to read those pages closely.

The State rests

At about 4:57 Eastern on Monday, after ten days of testimony and four days of its lead detective, the State rested. The defense moved for a directed verdict, asking the judge to take the case from the jury because the evidence couldn't support a conviction. The defense's argument isn't on our recording; the State's answer is. It listed the coordination among Brown, Johnson and White, the phones, the $40,000 withdrawal, White's spending, the Ramona video of the clothes being burned, Bradley's account that White was waiting to be paid, and the November 22 meetings. The judge denied the motion, saying the test is a scintilla of evidence, not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

CASE STORY PT 42 · DAY 10 Detective Recalls Thomas Said He Lent Mo3's Shooter a Chain as State Rests

That ruling was going to go that way under any standard, and I agree with it. The real test for whether a case gets to a jury is whether any rational juror could find every element beyond a reasonable doubt, looking at the evidence in the light most favorable to the State. On this record, with the November 22 sequence and the net worth searches, a rational juror could. Whether a rational juror must is a different question, and that's the one the twelve are answering now.

If you want the State's whole last day in one sitting, it's all here, along with my reflection on where the State's case stood when it rested.

NO BREAKS · DAY 10 Yella Beezy Trial Day 10, No Breaks Edition: The State Rests TOP MOMENTS · DAY 10 Day 10 Top Moments: No Notes, a PMG Ring, the State Rests MY DAY 10 REFLECTION The State Rests With Its Best Money Evidence and Still No Proof of a Hire FULL TESTIMONY · DAYS 7 TO 10 Detective Eric Barnes: Four Days of the Lead Detective

The label's plan, and three hours after a killing

The defense opened its case Monday evening with Lynn Scott, a music marketing executive with more than thirty years in the business, who in 2020 was at Hitco, the label Conway was signed to. Her job was the State's timeline. If Conway was in California in November 2020 because his label put him there, on a plan and a budget other people approved, then the travel the State reads around the payment was the label's business.

She told it plainly. The trip was planned for three days: fly out November 10, go to the studio, meet vendors, fly back November 13. The label booked and paid for it. Then Mo3 was killed, it "sent shockwaves" through the music business, and the executives wanted Conway to stay out west. He came back to Dallas once, on a ticket booked November 19 for November 20, because, she remembered him saying, he needed to check on his mother. He went back to California, looked for a place to live, spent Thanksgiving at her house with his girlfriend and children. The label, not the artist, set the release dates for the songs the State played as feud evidence, including "Keep It in the Streets."

FULL TESTIMONY · DAY 10 Lynn Scott: the Label Executive Behind the California Trip

Then the State's cross, a short one, turned her into its last exhibit of the day. The prosecutor showed her a group text from Conway's own iCloud with her number on it. At about 1:04 in the afternoon California time on November 11, about three hours after Mo3 was shot, she had written that they needed a call to strategize messaging "around what just happened in Dallas." A few minutes later: "we need to have him craft a response." Had the police contacted her? No. Had Conway told her anything? No. Why then? "I'm a marketer."

CLIP · DAY 10 Label Executive Reads 'Craft a Response' Texts From the Day of Mo3's Murder CASE STORY PT 43 · DAY 10 Label Exec Reads Her 'Craft a Response' Text From the Day Mo3 Was Killed

I think her answer is the truth, and I think it's the answer any marketer whose artist was in a very public feud would give. When a rival is shot dead on a freeway and your artist's name is going to be in every headline, you plan the messaging. That proves the feud was public. It doesn't prove Conway knew anything. What I noticed is that neither side asked her what Conway himself said in that group, and the State built a whole rebuttal theme on it the next day anyway.

The family's cash

Tuesday morning the defense brought the family, and its target was the single most important number in the State's case: the $40,000 Conway withdrew from a Chase branch in Frisco on November 20, 2020, three and a half hours after he landed.

Stephanie Jones, Conway's aunt, told the jury how money moved in that family once Conway made it. His mother had been a nurse, and when he made it he didn't want her working anymore, so she stopped. He paid her bills, bought the family's cars. In November 2020 the whole household, his mother, aunts and cousins, left a townhouse in Irving and lived for about a month in a Drury Inn in Frisco, waiting for a new house that was ready December 1. On November 17, 2020, with Conway still in California, he wired Ms. Jones $10,000, the memo reading "rooms," and her son drew it out and carried it to Conway's mother at the hotel. Why send it to the aunt? Because his mother "dealt with cash her whole life." The new house came empty, and it was furnished from nothing, stove, refrigerator, washer and dryer, televisions, all in cash Conway gave his mother. Twenty, thirty thousand at a time was "nothing out of the ordinary."

CASE STORY PT 44 · DAY 11 Conway's Aunt Testifies His $10,000 Wire Paid for the Family's Hotel Rooms FULL TESTIMONY · DAY 11 · PUBLIC WED NOV 11, 12:00 PM CT Stephanie Jones: the Aunt Who Got the $10,000 Wire

That's the defense's frame for the $40,000: a son who pays his mother's way, coming home to move her. The State's cross took about ninety seconds and found the soft spot. If the bank records show wires to Conway's mother, Ms. Jones had no reason to dispute them. It was always cash, she said, and then, finishing the thought, "that I know of." Her son Damari, sixteen or seventeen at the time, told the jury he carried the $10,000 to the hotel and saw Conway stop by that November, joking, checking on everyone. Did he see Conway give anyone money? "No, sir."

FULL TESTIMONY · DAY 11 · PUBLIC WED NOV 11, 4:00 PM CT Damari: the Cousin Who Saw No Cash Change Hands

Then Tommy Adams, the lead prosecutor, put up a page of Conway's bank records and set two dates side by side. November 12, 2020, the day after the killing: a $2,000 wire to Conway's mother. November 13: $2,000 to the mother of his children. And the children weren't even in Frisco that month; they were in Little Rock with their mother. The State's point was never said out loud, and it didn't need to be. The week of the killing, family money moved the ordinary way, by small wires.

Here's my read. The defense made the family's cash real. Nobody who heard Ms. Jones could doubt that Conway paid for a dozen people living in hotel rooms and filled a house in cash. What the defense didn't do is put the November 20 cash in his mother's hands. Nobody saw it. The wire they can document came three days earlier, by bank transfer, which is exactly the thing the State says the withdrawal was not. So the jury has a plausible innocent reason for the $40,000 and no witness to it. Under the law, the defense doesn't have to prove where the money went. The State has to prove where it went. That's the burden, and it doesn't move.

November 3, at the braiding shop

Then the defense went straight at the State's best new fact from Monday, the November 3 meeting of the three phones. Its answer was a hairdresser.

Sheree Willis has done hair in Dallas for about thirty years, and she braided Conway's hair on November 3, 2020. The texts came from Conway's own iCloud. At 3:30 that afternoon Dallas time, "on my way to the shop, ready when you are." That evening, a reminder not to tie his do-rag too tight. And her shop sits in the same strip as Jerry Johnson's barbershop, Tremendous Cuts, at Sunnyvale and Overton. So on the defense's account, the three phones came together on November 3 because Conway was getting his hair braided next door to Johnson's shop.

FULL TESTIMONY · DAY 11 · PUBLIC WED NOV 11, 2:00 PM CT Sheree Willis: His Hairstylist on November 3

The State's cross drew its own map on her geography. She knows Theodore Thomas; she's done his hair. Jerry Johnson owned the barbershop next door. Kewon White? She doesn't know him. On November 3 she saw only Conway. He came in his blacked-out SUV. And if the phone records put Johnson, Conway and White in that area that day, she wouldn't dispute them.

In rebuttal, the State turned her own texts into a number. Six hours pass between "on my way to the shop" and the do-rag reminder, and she'd told the jury a braid takes an hour and a half to two hours. The prosecutor argued Conway spent the rest next door at Johnson's, and said, "I believe that's when that conversation took place." The State argues last in Texas, so the defense never got to answer that.

I want to be careful here, because I think this is the most dangerous thing the State said all day. There's no evidence of where Conway spent those other four hours. He may have sat in that chair longer. He may have walked next door. He may have left and come back for the reminder text. A text telling someone how to tie a do-rag doesn't mark the moment a braid ended. The jury is allowed to draw an inference from the timing. What the jury should know is that it is an inference built on the gap between two text messages, offered at a point where no one could answer it.

The phone that never went quiet

The defense's last witness was its answer to the FBI's phone maps. Brian Ingram runs a private forensics firm after years in law enforcement, holds the same mapping certification as the State's agent, and told the jury candidly that this was only his third time testifying on historical cell-site analysis.

He walked the jury through Conway's phone from November 20 to 23, 2020, the days of the money. A tower contact puts a phone near a place, he cautioned, never at one. The phone came off a plane at DFW around midday on the 20th, was near Conway's home in Frisco at 3:11, had passed the Chase branch by 4:09, and by 5:16 was hitting towers around the Drury Inn, where his family was living, for close to an hour and forty-five minutes. That night and into the next day it sat around his home. Across the whole stretch, the longest gap he saw was about twenty minutes. The phone never went quiet.

CASE STORY PT 45 · DAY 11 Defense Phone Expert Finds No Gaps in Conway's Records Nov 20-23

That matters because the State's witnesses have said that people in this case, Conway among them, turned phones off and changed numbers. On these four days, the defense says, Conway's phone stayed on and in plain view. And it put the afternoon of the withdrawal next to the hotel where the family that "dealt with cash" was living.

Then Ingram turned to the day of the killing, and gave the defense its best new evidence of the trial. Kewon White's own iPhone keeps a database of significant locations, satellite fixes with times. At 2:49 on the afternoon of November 11, 2020, about three hours after Mo3 was shot, White's phone was inside Devin Brown's house on Britton, precise enough to put it in the upper front corner of the house. Brown's own phone was on the tower serving that house from 2:45 to 4:25. And two nights earlier, November 9 at about 10:19, White's phone was inside Brown's house again, while Brown's phone hit the same tower sixteen times. November 9 is the day White and Brown first swapped numbers.

CASE STORY PT 46 · DAY 11 Defense Expert Places Mo3's Shooter's Phone Inside Devin Brown's Home

The defense's picture: the shooter with the locator, two nights before and three hours after, with nothing touching Conway. That's a real point. Brown had his own grudge against Mo3 (Mo3's video of Brown's sons wearing his chains) and his own cash. If the jury is looking for a reasonable doubt about who was behind this, Brown's house is where the defense pointed it.

And then Ingram's last point, aimed at the State's favorite text. At 12:27 that Sunday morning, November 22, Conway texted Johnson that he was "hitting him up now." There was no ordinary call from Conway's phone. But twelve seconds after the text, his phone opened a data session that ran eleven minutes and fifteen seconds, data going up as well as down, consistent with a video call on FaceTime or Instagram. Ingram checked Devarius Moore's two phones for a matching session at the same minutes. Nothing.

"All it means is there's no data"

The State's cross of Ingram was quiet, careful, and I think the most effective cross either side did on Day 11.

First, Ingram agreed the FBI agent's map was accurate and the lab's work was sound. His map shows the same movements, just "parsed out" differently. Then his bill: he charges by the device and the records set, and his bill in this case came to $40,000 plus sales tax. In a trial about a $40,000 withdrawal, that number sat in the room for a second.

Then the hypothetical. If the prosecutor leaves his phone at home tomorrow, switched on, and spends the day at the courthouse, does the phone prove he was home? No. So no gaps in Conway's phone doesn't mean Conway was with his phone. "Totally correct." A phone in airplane mode may leave nothing at all. "All it means is there's no data." Ingram knew of a second number for Conway that the records don't cover.

CASE STORY PT 47 · DAY 11 · PUBLIC WED NOV 11, 8:00 AM CT Defense Expert Agrees the Data Can't Show Who Held Conway's Phone

Then the dot on the defense's own map that sits apart from all the others. Sunday, November 22, about seven minutes, a Clay Cooley car dealership in Irving, on a Sunday, when, as the prosecutor reminded a Texas jury, car dealerships are closed. Trapboy Freddy's phone was at the same place at the same time. Did the two phones meet anywhere else in those three days? Not that Ingram remembered. The defense's own expert put the two alleged financers together, briefly, outside a closed business, hours after "I'm gonna get that shit done."

The State also took the November 11 maps and folded them back into its own story. White's phone, on the defense's exhibit, fit following and killing Mo3 on I-35. The trail Ingram highlighted ran from the barbershop to Johnson's house on Ramona, to Brown's on Britton, and back to Ramona, alongside the video of Johnson and White burning White's clothes in the backyard. Shooter, locator, middleman, all in the hours after the killing.

And the midnight texts, laid out by the minute. At 12:12 Johnson asks about Conway's people. At 12:13 Conway texts Trapboy Freddy, "yo, you made it." Fourteen minutes later, "hitting him now," and the data session. The State's reading: the "people" was Moore, and Conway reached him within a minute of being asked, whatever the video call was. The defense's reading: the call could have been his girlfriend or his mother, and Moore's records show nothing. The last question: who else did Conway talk to in those minutes? "I don't know."

FULL TESTIMONY · DAY 11 · PUBLIC WED NOV 11, 11:00 AM CT Brian Ingram: What the Phone Maps Can't Prove

I think Ingram's direct had a fair point that the cross answered in a single line. If the call at 12:27 was to Moore, you'd expect to see it on Moore's side, and it isn't there. The State's answer is that Moore may have had another phone, which is possible, and which is also the State asking the jury to fill a gap. I'd score the expert as a split: he weakened the defense's own "no gaps" point by admitting what it can't prove, and he strengthened the defense's point about the video call and about Devin Brown. And he handed the State seven minutes at a closed dealership.

The defense rests, and Conway does not testify

At about 2:55 Eastern on Tuesday, Toby Shook told the jury the defense rests. Markies Conway did not testify. The State called no rebuttal witnesses. "Ladies and gentlemen," the judge said, "we now have all the evidence in this case."

The judge's instruction on Conway's silence is the law, and it's worth saying plainly what it means. A defendant has an absolute right not to testify. The jury may not refer to it, allude to it or hold it against him for any purpose. The burden never moves to him. I'd add the honest view from the jury box: jurors are human, and some of them wonder. The instruction exists precisely because the law knows that, and it tells them not to go there. A defense that rests on the State's failure to prove the money doesn't need its client on the stand to make that argument, and putting him there would have opened him to cross-examination on every feud video and lyric the State played.

One more process note on the charge. No accomplice-witness instruction was read. In Texas, the testimony of an accomplice has to be corroborated by other evidence connecting the defendant to the crime, and the jury is told so when a witness is an accomplice. The only witness who might have qualified is Thomas, who was out in California with Conway and testified under immunity, and his accusing account came in only to judge his credibility, so the absence may matter less than it sounds. Whether anyone asked for that instruction happened off our feed.

The State's first argument: "his lick back"

The State opened with Conway's own words, from an interview after he was shot on a tollway in 2018: "I'ma get my lick back." When someone tells you and shows you who they are, believe them, the prosecutor said. Then the killing itself, laid out for the jury once more: White outside Jocelyn Jackson's apartment for eighteen hours, following Mo3 onto I-35 the next day, more than forty rounds fired, thirteen wounds.

The prosecutor leaned hard on "payment or promise," the puzzle from jury selection (some pieces missing, but you can still see the picture), and on Cedric Bradley, the shooter's cousin, who testified on Day 7 in jail clothes that White told him he "did the work to the rapper on the freeway" and was waiting on his money. Yes, Bradley is a drug dealer hoping for a benefit, the prosecutor said, but look at the details only the shooter could know, matched by the autopsy. Then the law of parties, with the Ocean's Eleven example from jury selection, and the players named: White the shooter, Brown the setup man, Johnson the middleman, and Conway "the financer." The State closed its first argument on that Sunday-morning text, Conway telling Johnson he would get it done. He got it done, the prosecutor said.

CLIP · DAY 7 Cooperator Says Kewon White Gave Him a Step by Step Account of Mo3's Murder FULL TESTIMONY · DAY 7 Cedric Bradley: What He Says Kewon White Told Him

The best part of that argument, legally, was the payment-or-promise point. It's correct under this charge, and it gives the State a second road: even a juror who doubts the $40,000 ever reached White can convict on a promise made before the killing. That's where the November 3 searches and Bradley's "waiting on my money" do their work.

Shook: cold logic, and the phone in Frisco

Toby Shook started where he started in jury selection. This isn't a search for the truth, he told them, and it isn't about getting justice for anyone. Their one duty is to require the State to rule out every logical, reasonable doubt. Not passion, not instinct. "Cold logic." You don't have to like him, he said. You can think he's probably guilty. If a reasonable doubt is left, the verdict is not guilty.

Then Theodore Thomas, the heart of it. For years the State had nothing to indict Conway on, Shook said, until it arrested Thomas on a federal drug case and the pressure came. Thomas told a man in jail that they wanted him to "say some bullshit," and told this jury that meant a lie. Then he "overheard a conversation," got a deal out of federal custody, and his case is to be dismissed.

And then the passage I think was Shook's best. Thomas told the grand jury that Conway came into the barbershop in the three days after he flew home from California, and was told there that he needed to pay. The police had Conway's tower records for exactly those three days. The phone sat in Frisco the whole time and never went near the barbershop. Detective Barnes knew that, sat in the grand jury room while Thomas told the story for hours, and agreed he didn't think the grand jurors needed to know it. "That should frighten you," Shook said.

MY COMMENTARY Only One Witness Put Conway at the Barbershop and He Called It a Lie

I agree with Shook that it's a process problem, and I'll say where it lands. What the grand jury heard isn't before this jury, and the charge tells them the indictment is no evidence of anything. What the jury can do with it is weigh the investigation. A detective who let a grand jury indict a man on a story his own phone records contradicted is a detective whose reading of a text thread I'd want checked twice. That's a question I'd want answered, and on this record nobody has answered it.

Then the money. Conway's $40,000 came out of the bank in hundreds and fifties. The cash found on White in Mount Pleasant was street money: hundreds of fives, dozens of ones, a hundred-odd tens, a few hundreds, wrapped in rubber bands. White had the same bills and the same bands on the jeweler's counter on November 22, before any meeting the State relies on. And Conway filmed his own cash back in California on November 23, the way rappers promote themselves. "It's the same money," Shook said. "That's a reasonable doubt."

And then the question I'd ask too. Trapboy Freddy was in California with Conway, came home when he did, stood with him for those seven minutes, and sits on the same text threads. The State calls him an unindicted co-conspirator, and Detective Barnes agreed there's no probable cause even to arrest him. How, Shook asked, does the same evidence send one man to die in prison and not get the other one arrested?

The second defense argument, and two bad minutes

Conway's second lawyer took the rest of the defense's time. The songs, he said, are propensity evidence, art used to say a man is the kind of person who does this. "If Stephen King was sitting in that chair, he'd get the death penalty." Then he read the jury Jocelyn Jackson's messages with Devin Brown, the father of her children, and called that the real feud in this case: Brown, who she told detectives had wished death on her and put a gun on her, and who, the lawyer said, called White forty-six times in twelve hours on November 10 and 11. Why, he asked, did the defense have to fill the gaps?

Now the defense had its own bad minutes, and the standard here is that a lawyer who stumbles gets named for it the same as one who does it well. This lawyer told the jury the numbers on Lynn Scott's group text were California numbers, executives only, not his client. The State corrected him, and he conceded it in front of the jury: "I stand corrected. 917 is New York." And more than once the defense told the jury a guilty verdict means Conway dies in prison. The State objected the first time that this isn't a death penalty case, and the answer was that he dies in prison if he's found guilty. That's the law of punishment for capital murder in a case like this, but punishment isn't this jury's question, and a lawyer as good as Toby Shook knows it. It reads as a plea to sympathy in a trial where the defense has spent two weeks telling the jury to set emotion aside.

The rebuttal: the State's best hour, and its least careful one

Tommy Adams closed for the State, and he started with a number: 2,189 days, and tomorrow 2,190, the days since Mo3 was killed. He thanked Mo3's mother in the gallery, and the defense objected to arguing to the gallery. Dallas, he told them, is "the city where we kill presidents." Then the three M's: who had the motive, who had the money, and who had the man.

His answer to tunnel vision was strong, and fair. On the day of the killing, Mo3's mother, who didn't know Conway or Moore, gave police four names, and Yella Beezy was one of them. Jocelyn Jackson told detectives to look at Yella Beezy and Devin Brown. Those are leads coming in from the people closest to Mo3 on the day he died. Then he went further than the record: if Barnes were only out to get Conway, "Devarius Moore would be indicted. I promise you that."

He played Conway's interview again, "I'ma get my lick back," not a song, an interview. He played the line from "On Your Head." He put up the text Conway sent his girlfriend two days before the killing, telling her not to grab any guns: "We got others for that. It's not a song. This is life."

CLIP · DAY 11 Prosecutor Plays Conway's 'Lick Back' Interview and Says It's Not a Song MY COMMENTARY Why Conway's 'Don't Grab No Gun' Text Doesn't Prove a Murder for Hire

And then, about twelve minutes in, this: "Devin Brown's indicted. And I'm going to prosecute him. Me and my team are going to fight for justice for Miss Noble, them grandkids." The defense objected. The judge told the jury to disregard it and denied the defense's motion for a mistrial.

Here's how the cure works, because it's how the process is supposed to work. First comes the instruction to disregard, and the law presumes a jury can follow it. A mistrial comes only when the words are so bad no instruction can unring them, and then the whole trial starts over. One sentence, instructed away at once, almost never gets there, and I don't think it should have here. The judge did what the process calls for.

But it wasn't one sentence. Earlier the same prosecutor gave his personal promise on why Moore isn't charged, a decision this jury has no evidence about. No objection that I could hear. He opened by thanking Mo3's mother. Then he brought up the beating of Mo3's manager, Brandon Rainwater, on video, and Conway's boast afterward, "Who beat him up? I beat him up!" Conway didn't beat him up by himself, Adams said, and he didn't kill Mo3 by himself either. The charge lets the jury use that beating only for things like motive or plan. It doesn't let them use it to say Conway is the kind of man who does this. That's the line the law draws, and that argument walked right up to it. Nobody stood up.

The rest of the rebuttal was the State's case at its strongest. The "change in the couch" texts with Moore. "Three for three": every time Johnson and Conway met, Johnson called White right after. Zero calls between Johnson and White before the murder, fifteen during Conway's fifty-seven hours in Dallas. The $40,000 drawn three and a half hours after landing, about $4,800 in the Instagram video, "$35,200 short there." The crisp hundreds in White's other pocket, kept apart from the rubber-banded street money. "Brown was the middleman for the location, but Jerry was the middleman for the money." Whether Conway promised or paid, Adams said, "I'd submit to you he did both."

CASE STORY PT 48 · DAY 11 · CLOSING ARGUMENTS Closing Arguments Pit a $40,000 Payment Against Conway's Phone in Frisco

To me the rebuttal was the State's best hour and its least careful one. The personal promises won't undo a verdict on their own. They're in the record now, and that's what a record is for. If the jury convicts, an appellate court will read that hour line by line, and a prosecutor who had the facts he had didn't need to give it anything to read.

Where I stand as the jury goes out

So here is where I have it, element by element, as my opinion. The jury's is the only one that counts.

That Kewon White murdered Mo3 is proved. The judge herself said "we already know that," and White has been convicted.

Conway's intent rests on his own words: the "lick back" interview, "we got others for that" two days before the killing, and the feud the charge lets the jury weigh for motive. I think that's the State's strongest piece, and it's strong.

The money is real. Before the killing, there's White searching the two rappers' net worth on November 3, and his words to Bradley about waiting to be paid. After it, there's the $40,000, fifteen Johnson-White calls in fifty-seven hours, "I'm gonna get that shit done," seven minutes at a closed dealership with Moore, and crisp hundreds in White's pocket. I think the State has proved that somebody promised White money, and that money moved toward him after November 20.

The hire is where it stands or falls: that Conway employed White, through Johnson, with Conway's money. Every road to it runs through Jerry Johnson, and Johnson never took the stand. The bills on White don't match the bank. The State itself told the jury two men financed this, and the charge says the money has to come from the defendant. Its only account of a money conversation is barred as proof. A careful juror reads the last line of that sentence and asks: which financer? The State's answer in rebuttal was that he promised and he paid, both. That's argument, and argument isn't evidence.

If I were in that box, I'd have a hard time getting past "from the defendant" beyond a reasonable doubt on this record. I can see how twelve people get to guilty: the November 3 searches, the November 22 sequence and "we got others for that" make a powerful picture, and the law of parties is built for exactly this kind of case. I can see how they get to not guilty: no contact, no traced money, a recanting cooperator, an uncharged co-financer and a lead detective who never wrote down a word. The process gave both sides their full say, and the judge held them both to the rules. Now it's theirs.

Deliberations are set to begin this morning at nine Dallas time, on the sixth anniversary of the day Mo3 was killed on that freeway. Mo3's mother sat through all eleven days of evidence. Conway sat a few feet from her. If the twelve agree with the State, he never leaves prison. I'll be watching for the first note that comes out of that room.

NO BREAKS · DAY 11 · PUBLIC WED NOV 11, 7:00 PM CT Yella Beezy Trial Day 11, No Breaks Edition: Defense Rests, Closing Arguments TOP MOMENTS · DAY 11 Day 11 Top Moments: A GPS Fix, Closing Arguments, Not a Song

Catch up on the week

A lot of this trial went up after the last article, and some of it is the best way to understand what the jury is weighing right now. Days 10 and 11 in full, as they happened live:

LIVE BROADCAST · DAY 10 The Yella Beezy Murder-for-Hire Trial, Day 10 LIVE BROADCAST · DAY 11 The Yella Beezy Murder-for-Hire Trial, Day 11

The full testimonies that went up this week from earlier in the trial: the money analyst behind the two $40,000 withdrawals, the cop who worked Conway's security, the Lewisville detective who asked Conway why he wouldn't press charges, and the FBI agent whose phone maps both sides fought over on Tuesday.

FULL TESTIMONY · DAY 7 Deanna Davenport: Conway's Cash and Two $40,000 Withdrawals FULL TESTIMONY · DAY 6 Officer Brooks: the Call After the I-35 Shooting FULL TESTIMONY · DAY 6 Sean Dority: Why Yella Beezy Wouldn't Press Charges FULL TESTIMONY · DAY 6 · PUBLIC WED NOV 11, 10:00 AM CT Taylor Page: the FBI Phone Maps TOP MOMENTS · DAY 9 Day 9 Top Moments: Conway's Text, a Frisco Phone, a Spam Folder

And my look back at the heart of the State's case, Days 2 through 9, before the defense ever stood up:

MY REFLECTION · DAYS 2 TO 9 Mo3's Shooter Is Proved but Every Line to Conway Is an Inference

Every Part of this trial, in order, lives in the Yella Beezy Trial Case Story podcast playlist. Tell me in the comments where you have the money after these closings: paid, promised, or neither.