CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF)- A former Chattanooga gang member charged with first degree murder in a 2016 murder was back in court Monday.
Andre Grier could receive the death penalty if convicted of the murder of Bianca Horton.
Horton was set to testify in a different murder trial connected to Grier’s gang, the Athens Park Bloods, after her baby daughter Zoe was shot.
The main issue during Monday’s hearing of Andre Grier’s case was whether or not a kite would be admitted into evidence for October’s trial.
This kite prosecutors say contained threatening messages that they believe Grier wrote to threaten other gang members into silence.
Lead investigator on this case for the Chattanooga Police Department, Jeremy Wimbush, read a phone transcript from Grier where he said, “If they (expletive) you, (expletive). They’re gonna (expletive) me off too.”
That is just a part of a phone call prosecutors argue is related to a “kite” that they say was intercepted inside of the Hamilton County jail in August 2016.
This is not an actual kite, but a jail letter that goes by the slang term kite behind bars.
In that kite, prosecutors believe Grier was threatening fellow gang member Johnny Clemmons against testifying in a separate case unrelated to the murder of Bianca Horton.
Wimbush read the letter aloud in court.
He read of the letter, “I don’t know the mark you’ve become, but if you get on that stand, and cooperate any further with these people, it’s personal with us. I love you as a brother, don’t cross the line. Let bygones be bygones, and this paperwork disappears.”
Wimbush further read the transcript of a jail phone call between Grier and a woman who was the mother of several of his children.
Grier said in that phone call according to Wimbush, “He doing that, that’s the reason these folks have all of these (expletive) guns out because he done said my name in this whole situation too, in that situation.”
Prosecutors argue this is evidence tying Grier to Horton’s murder/
Colin Campbell, one of those prosecutors, said, “It is a definite attempt to cover up the conspiracy and to keep people quiet because Mr. Grier is worried about himself.”
However Grier’s defense attorney, Kit Rogers, argued this kite was not relevant.
He said, “It sounds more like bootstrapping some stuff to just point out “Gang! Gang ! Gang! Gang! Boogity, boogity, boogity!””
Hamilton County Judge Boyd Patterson ultimately ruled to allow the kite into evidence for the impending trial, a decision Rogers says he’s ready to argue against.
He said, “So we gotta find these circumstances, these separate circumstances and tie them all together to see if we can make him the Don Corleone, right?”
A jury in this trial will be selected in Anderson County in September for the eventual October jury date of Andre Grier.
