PORTSMOUTH, Va. - The jury in the murder trial of former Portsmouth Police officer Stephen Rankin began deliberations Wednesday morning, a week after the trial started.
Rankin is on trial for shooting and killing 18-year-old William Chapman in the parking lot of the Portsmouth Walmart in April of 2015. After an investigation, Rankin was indicted on first degree murder charges.
At 11 a.m. on Wednesday the courtroom reconvened after there was a complaint that a woman spoke to a member of the jury.
The woman is a family friend of the Chapman family was questioned by the judge as to what she said.
She said the encounter was brief and she got into a separate elevator. The judge stressed that no one is supposed to be talking to any of the jurors during the duration of the trial.
The trial began last Wednesday with the jury selection process and continued Thursday with opening statements from the prosecution and defense, as well as testimonies from police officers, firefighters, Virginia State Police investigators, and a person shopping at the Walmart that day.
On Friday, the judge, jurors and lawyers took a trip to Walmart to give the jury a better perspective of where the shooting took place. Later that day, the jury was shown the taser video taken the day Chapman was shot and killed. A Walmart security guard testified and described the shooting and verbal confrontation between Rankin and Chapman. He was cross-examined before the Commonwealth rested their case.
Four construction workers who saw the shooting took the stand on Monday and gave their recollections of what happened.
Rankin took the stand in his own defense Tuesday morning. He was on the stand for two and a half hours. He spent 90 minutes answering questions from his lawyer and then spent 60 minutes being crossed examined by Commonwealth's Attorney Stephanie Morales.
During closing arguments, Defense Attorney James Broccoletti said that if Chapman just walked away he would not been shot and killed and Rankin would have called for back up.
Morales told the jury again to not leave their common sense at the door. She said the same statement during her opening statements. Morales also pointed to her star witness, the loss prevention officer at Walmart and wants the jury to remember his testimony.
The jury went home for the day around 5:30 p.m. They will resume deliberations at 9:30 a.m. Thursday.
News 3 will be live streaming parts of the trial on WTKR.com and on the WTKR News 3 Facebook page. Stay tuned for updates.
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