Jury reaches verdict in 2nd trial on violent hammer attack during Wilmington jewelry heist

A New Castle County jury on Thursday found a man guilty of assaulting a store owner with a hammer during a 2022 jewelry heist in Wilmington.

A jury found Calvin Ushery, 40, guilty of assault, robbery and a weapons charge after about two hours of deliberation. The violent nature of the robbery drew national attention after surveillance video from inside the store was circulated by the defendant’s family shortly after the heist.

This was the second trial for Ushery on allegations that he robbed the now-defunct Solid Gold Jewelers on Ninth Street in downtown Wilmington in September 2022. The state’s first attempt to convict him last year ended with jurors deadlocked and unable to render a verdict.

Leading up to this latest trial, Ushery rejected two plea deals offered by prosecutors: one that would cap their recommended sentence at 25 years and another that would see them recommend 20 years of imprisonment, according to prosecutors' in-court statements ahead of trial.

In both deals, prosecutors agreed not to declare Ushery a habitual offender, which would multiply his potential sentence range from 75 years to life. It's unclear now if prosecutors will seek to declare him a habitual offender ahead of his sentencing.

If prosecutors do not move to have him sentenced as a habitual offender, he faces between seven and 75 years in prison, according to attorneys' pretrial statements in court.

He is set to be sentenced in July.

The violent robbery

Surveillance video of the attack and robbery circulated shortly after the crime shows a man wearing a COVID-19 mask and sunglasses entering the store in the morning.

The video begins with a man grabbing the owner of the store, who was 68 years old at the time of the robbery. The video shows the man striking the store owner, leaving him on the ground. The robber then places jewelry in a bag, taking several minutes to gather items.

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Periodically, the robber returned to the owner of the store and struck him again, including blows with a hammer, prosecutors said. After several minutes of gathering the store's inventory, the robber appears to use a cloth to wipe surfaces in the store.

The jewelry store owner spent four days in the intensive care unit following the attack. Surveillance footage from nearby shows the man police believe to be the robber riding a bicycle north away from the scene, prosecutors said.

Evidence presented to the jury by prosecutors included surveillance footage of a man they said was Ushery seeking to sell large amounts of jewelry in two local pawn shops a week after the heist.

The operator of one of those jewelry stores was alarmed by the wares and called the police. Shortly after, officers patrolling the city saw a man who matched the description of the man seeking to sell the suspect jewelry.

It was Ushery, who was carrying hundreds of pieces of jewelry in bags and had just sold $300 worth of it to a woman outside a local gas station. Before he was arrested the woman grabbed her money back as well as his phone, prosecutors said in court. A man associated with the jewelry store testified that the items recovered on Ushery were from the store.

Prosecution emphasizes similarities

While Ushery was arrested with what witnesses testified as goods stolen from the heist, prosecutors still had to show Ushery was the one who actually stole the jewelry by force.

To do that, they emphasized in closing arguments to the jury similarities between Ushery’s appearance and those of the robber depicted in surveillance footage of the store as well as the man who entered the pawn shops seeking to sell jewelry at the local pawn shops.

Prosecutors emphasized that both Ushery and the robber are black men with a “stocky” build, they said gray patches in the robber’s beard were the same as those on Ushery’s when he was arrested and that distinctive ear piercings can be discerned from both the surveillance video and Ushery’s mugshot. They also said the robber and Ushery carried themselves similarly as they walked.

Prosecutors also pointed to cellphone evidence, which showed that Ushery’s phone was in downtown Wilmington in the vicinity of the store when the robbery occurred and was generally traveling north, toward where Ushery lived, afterward. They also noted forensic data evidence that showed Ushery’s phone was turned off two hours after the robbery and that his account was connected to a new device the next day.

Deputy Attorney General Jamie McCloskey told the jury that it cannot be "coincidence" that Ushery looks and walks similar to the suspect, that cellphone records show him in the vicinity of the store at the time, that his phone was switched the day after and that he got caught with 250 pieces of jewelry identified as stolen from the store.

"Either the defendant has the worst possible luck or, as the evidence shows beyond a reasonable doubt, he did commit this robbery," McCloskey told the jury Thursday.

‘Similar does not mean the same’

Defense attorney Matthew Keating told jurors that detectives unfairly focused only on Ushery as the robber once they found him with stolen jewelry.

Ushery's daughter testified as part of the defense case that Ushery won the jewelry during a dice game. Prosecutors characterized her testimony as unreliable as she could not remember basic details about where the game occurred and other basic details about that day.

Addressing visual similarities pointed out by prosecutors between Ushery and the robber, Keating emphasized to the jury that “similar does not mean the same.”

He showed a portion of surveillance video that showed a "stocky" police officer walking around the scene in a way he said was similar to how prosecutors characterized the suspect’s gait.

“This is America, a lot of people have that body type,” Keating told the jury.

During his closing summations to the jury, Keating also rolled out a bicycle that was recovered from Ushery’s residence. During Ushery's first trial, prosecutors had described it as the “coupe de grace” in the case. The suspect was seen in surveillance video riding away from the scene on a black bicycle, and during Ushery's first trial, a detective testified that it was the same bicycle.

Pointing out differences in the bike’s build, Keating noted that prosecutors had abandoned that theory during the second trial proceeding, despite detectives' previous testimony. McCloskey emphasized that the detectives’ belief about the relevance of the bicycle had “evolved” with time and it was not being presented by prosecutors as evidence in the present case.

Keating also emphasized inconsistencies in the cellphone location data, that detectives forensically tested only a handful of items from the scene and moved about the scene in a way he argued to the jury would contaminate it.

Keating said prosecutors had characterized the suspect as calculated: wearing a disguise, switching his phone, wiping down surfaces within the scene to remove any trace of DNA.

He argued that did not comport with Ushery's undisputed actions tied to the case, specifically the fact that Ushery was caught bumbling down the street with bags full of jewelry trying to sell it to strangers after allegedly going to a pawn shop just a few blocks away from the crime scene to try to sell it.

"That is not calculated. No offense to him, but that is stupid," Keating said. "That is not well thought out."

Contact Xerxes Wilson at (302) 324-2787 or xwilson@delawareonline.com.

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Verdict reached in Wilmington hammer attack and jewelry heist