New Hanover jury finds man guilty of murder in 2020 shooting death
A man faces a life sentence in prison without parole after being found guilty of murder.
After a week-long trial, a New Hanover County jury found Donte Jamal Rollinson, 48, guilty of first-degree murder in the 2020 death of Jason Seth Stokes and possession of a firearm by a felon, according to a news release from District Attorney Ben David's office.
The charges stem from a February 2020 shooting. Wilmington police officers arrived at a fenced-in yard 619 Fullwood Street to find Stokes, 38, on the ground dead from a single gunshot wound to the face with Rollinson nearby in the same yard.
As Rollinson was being placed in handcuffs, a .45 caliber handgun was found on the ground where he had been. That gun was eventually determined to be the murder weapon, or at least — according to the testimony of the State Crime Lab analyst who examined the weapon and the partially-intact bullet recovered form Stokes' body — to have come off the same assembly line of the same gun factory at about the same time as the murder weapon.
Rollinson was impaired on phencyclidine (PCP) at the time of his arrest, and much of the trialwas devoted to showing that Rollinson nevertheless had the capacity to form premeditated anddeliberate intent to kill, which is a prerequisite for conviction of first-degree murder under state laws. The State had witnesses from the State Crime Lab drug chemistry/toxicology section and a Wilmington police officer, who is a certified drug recognition expert testify to the wide range of possible effects of PCP. Testimony was also provided by the paramedic who assessed Rollinson on the scene.
Rollinson chose to take the witness stand and tell a story that he had never revealed about how a stranger who was wearing clothes just like his came into the yard and how Rollinson was then knocked unconscious. However, the jury returned a guilty verdict.
This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: New Hanover jury finds man guilty of murder in 2020 shooting death
