A Panola County circuit jury agreed Thursday that dormitory receptionist Demetrius Smith raped and kidnapped Ole Miss student Carnesha Nelson, later drowning her in the waters of Sardis Lake.

The jury verdict came after four and a half days of testimony in which witnesses for the prosecution described a gruesome death at the hands of Smith, beginning with his kidnapping of Nelson at her Oxford apartment.

Smith, 27, is from Lambert and served in the U.S. Navy.

Nelson was from Moss Point. She would have turned 20 on May 27, 2004, the day two fishermen found her body near Engineer’s Point, her hands bound with a cell phone cord.

Smith and Nelson knew each other through Smith’s job as a desk receptionist at Crosby Hall, a women’s dormitory on the Ole Miss campus.

The jury of 10 women and two men began deliberating at 11:30 a.m. Thursday and announced its verdict at about 3:40 p.m.

The state charged Smith with capital murder, contending that he committed the crime of murder while engaged in an act of kidnapping.

The state did not seek the death penalty against Smith, but he could receive a life term in prison without parole for the crime.

Circuit Judge Ann Lamar presided over the trial.

State forensic pathologist Dr. Steven Hayne testified that Nelson died of a freshwater drowning, telling jurors the marks on the back of her neck suggested she was forced under the water.

Jurors also learned of Nelson’s ransacked apartment bedroom, watching a video tape that showed ripped window blinds, a twisted window screen and pieces of duct tape that were stuck to the bedding.

Panola County investigator Mark Whitten described the remainder of Nelson’s one-bedroom apartment as "immaculate," later holding up the twisted window frame to symbolize the fight that took place there.

The screen was found across the room when Whitten, Lt. Allen Thompson of the Miss. Bureau of Investigations and David Bryan, the late Panola County sheriff, entered the apartment on May 27.

Prior to this week’s trial, the state shipped the window screen and the entire window frame to an FBI lab in Virginia. An FBI expert testified on Wednesday that the screen had been removed by someone pushing it from the inside of the bedroom.
"I submit to you, ladies and gentlemen, that Carnesha wanted out of that bedroom," District Attorney John Champion told jurors in his closing arguments.

DNA evidence from the bed was matched with Smith, and a fingerprint lifted from the tape and examined by an FBI forensic expert matched the defendant as well.

Smith testified Wednesday on his own behalf, the last of four defense witnesses put on the stand by public defender Clay Vanderburg.

In questioning from Vanderburg, Smith said he went to Nelson’s apartment on May 25 and had sex with her, waving goodbye as he left and she talked on her cell phone.

In cross examination by Champion, however, Smith said he "had a plan" to have sex with Nelson, boasting later that he is good at charming women.

"I’ve never had no problem with having sex with women," Smith told Champion.

"So you’re some kind of stud?" Champion asked.

The defendant grinned back, sitting up straighter in the witness chair after Champion made the suggestion.

Other witnesses for the defense included Smith’s relatives and a girlfriend. They were put on the witness stand to provide an alibi but gave conflicting testimony.

In his closing arguments, Champion summarized the state’s case against Smith: he raped Nelson and then had to kill her to keep her quiet about the violent assault.

Smith gained entry into Nelson’s apartment, perhaps telling her he wanted to talk, Champion said, and then he raped her in her bedroom.

Now facing a rape charge, Champion said, Smith took the student from her apartment at knifepoint, driving her to Sardis Lake in her white SUV with her hands bound with her own phone cord. He then drowned her near the beach.

The state’s circumstantial evidence in the case included a knife found in Smith’s car, white sand found in the floorboard of Nelson’s SUV, a CD case that was removed from Nelson’s vehicle to Smith’s vehicle, Smith’s fingerprint on the tape and his DNA that was found in the bed.
    

A three-man film crew from Court TV has been taping the Demetrius Smith murder trial this week for a future airing on the cable TV channel.

The crew includes a producer, an audio engineer and a camera man.

The circuit trial was held at the Panola County Courthouse in Batesville, where a jury found Smith guilty of kidnapping and killing Ole Miss student Carnesha Nelson.

In the trial, Smith was accused of kidnapping Nelson at knife-point at her Oxford apartment and taking her to Sardis Lake, where he drowned her in the upper lake and then fled.

Clay Vanderburg, Smith’s court-appointed attorney, produced Smith’s family members from Quitman County who provided an alibi for the defendant on the night of the murder.

When the four-day Smith trial airs, it will be shown in its entirety as part of the network’s daytime lineup, said Court TV spokesman Andie Silvers.

Court TV is headquartered in New York City.

A date for airing has not been set, Silvers said, though a trial typically airs a few months after it’s completed.

The Smith trial included over 50 prosecution exhibits, including a silver knife, a CD case that belonged to Nelson but was found in Smith’s car and a battered window screen from Nelson’s apartment.

Trial witnesses included Smith himself, FBI scientists, Panola County investigator Mark Whitten and Nelson’s father, Carmen Nelson.

Circuit Judge Ann Lamar presided over the murder trial.

Silvers said the pending trial caught the attention of Court TV’s trial tracking department, which researches upcoming trials across the country.

If the researchers consider an upcoming trial a worthwhile case, they recommend the proceedings to a committee meeting of upper-level executive and producers, Silvers said.

In the Batesville courtroom, Court TV camera man Joe Hoffman filmed witnesses during testimony, zoomed in on aerial photos that showed the apartment grounds and also showed Smith as he sat at the defense table, where he wore a shirt and tie.

The trial footage will presumably include a scene of investigator Whitten holding up the battered and bent window screen for jurors. The screen’s condition hinted at the brutality of the struggle between Smith and Nelson in her bedroom before her kidnapping.

The jury is not photographed during court proceedings.

Court TV audio engineer Marvin Strait sat behind Hoffman during the proceedings. Strait was tasked with stabilizing the sound quality in the cavernous courtroom.

Behind Hoffman and Strait sat producer Carl Libowitz, who used a Dell laptop to transcribe the witnesses’ testimony for future reference.

Libowitz also kept an eye on a floor monitor that showed him where Hoffman’s camera was trained.

In addition to filming the trial, the crew traveled to Sardis Lake and the Oxford apartments where Nelson lived, filming both locales for use in the TV program.

Although a Court TV crew came to Mississippi earlier this year for the Killen trial in Philadelphia, the three-man Panola crew was making its first trip into the state and the Deep South.

"Everybody says, ‘Hello’ and waves, and everybody says, ‘Y’all’ a lot," Strait observed. "I’ve never heard ‘y’all’ spoken so much."

"We know what Southern hospitality means because everybody’s been really nice to us," said Hoffman.

Reminded about the reputation Mississippi endures from the national media, Silvers said the Smith trial would focus on the brutal murder and the courtroom proceedings.

"This is a serious trial about the murder of a young woman," Silvers said. "We will cover it just as we would any other trial."

Silvers said she previously lived in Alabama and understood the concern about unflattering portrayals.