Champion tells Como Rotary he’s ready to try Tellis

By John Howell
District Attorney John Champion said Wednesday that he has filed an agreed order that will not challenge a defense motion for change of venue in the trial of Quinton Tellis for the December 6, 2014 murder of Jessica Chambers.
Speaking at the Como Rotary Club Wednesday, Champion said that he and assistant District Attorney Jay Hale had just returned from a Regional Organized Crime Information Center (ROCIC) meeting in Nashville which is assisting in evidence presentation for the trial.
“They’re putting together our exhibits for us; we took them all our cell phone data. They’re going to chart everything out for us,” Champion said, including audio and video tapes.
“We’re going to take all those and break them down into very short snippets for the jury to hear,” he said. The presentation will condense the large volume of documents and evidence for jurors. “I think it’s really going to be an understandable case.”

Ready for trial
“I’m ready to go to trial,” the District Attorney continued.
Champion said that the change of venue will likely result in jurors being chosen from another county on Monday and Tuesday, June 19 and 20, and being brought back to Batesville for the trial, though he said the decision will be made by Circuit Judge Gerald Chatham.
“The one thing I have to be careful of is how much this trial is going to cost,” the district attorney said. “I’ve got 42 witnesses. For us to transport 42 witnesses, house them, however many witnesses they (the defense) have and house them as opposed to transporting 14 or 15 and housing them (in Batesville) for a week is much, much cheaper.
“Whatever we do, we don’t want to break the county,” he added. “That’s why (I’m) using ROCIC — I’m a member of ROCIC — so everything they do for us is free.”

Alliance benefits Panola
Panola County and the four other counties of Champion’s 17th Judicial District continue to benefit from the alliance forged across local, state and federal jurisdictions during the Chambers investigation, according to the prosecutor. The ghastly account of volunteer firefighters discovering Chambers badly burned but then still barely alive at the scene of what they had thought was a car fire just outside Courtland attracted international media attention. When, during the days immediately following the murder, investigators could unearth none of the “street talk” that typically leaks hints that lead to suspects, social media fanned public fascination into sensationalism.

Access to more technology
“The cooperation that we have been able to develop district-wide with the feds (allows access to) technology that we don’t have access to,” Champion said. “In this particular case it was technology that helped us.”
“I’ve learned more about cell phones during the course of this case. Your cell phone right now is talking to the towers … Your phone periodically sends signals to the towers. It is becoming a great tool,” Champion continued.
Authorities used federal venues to subpoena cell phone records for “location data, what we call ‘pings,’” he said. “With Jessica’s phone; we had some issues with being able to get into her phone because nobody knew her password,” Champion said.

Murder suspect tracked
Cell phone data was also used to locate double murder suspect Quendarius Robinson on MLK Street in Batesville in November, 2015 following the shooting deaths of a Como grandmother and granddaughter, Champion said.
“I fully understand the privacy issues, that arise from this,” he said. “People say, ‘well I don’t want you listening to my conversations.’ That technology doesn’t exist without a court order.”
Gun-running to Chicago
In other matters related to the five counties — DeSoto, Tate, Panola, Yalobusha and Tallahatchie — that comprise the 17th Judicial District:
•”We’ve got a lot of gun-running that’s going on up and down I-55. I can’t tell you the number of guns that are used in Chicago killings that were actually purchased in Mississippi because it’s so much easier to purchase the guns,” Champion said.
“The gangs are getting hold of them and they’re running them straight up I-55 to Chicago;”
• The Chambers case will continue to attract media attention as the trial date nears. CNN is preparing a documentary on the Chambers murder that will likely be broadcast this spring, he said;
• Gang activity is present in every community, the district attorney said, “but it’s not the structure that you see in the larger communities because most of these folks have all grown up together;”
• “Most of the gangs that we have here, or a lot of them, are controlled out of Clarksdale. Not Memphis, it’s Clarksdale,” Champion said.