Teenager acquitted of slaying in Dorchester
As he lay dying of multiple gunshot wounds at his home in Dorchester, the 18-year-old who had come to the United States as a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo muttered, "Marquis shot me."
Prosecutors could not prove it.
After about four days of testimony and a day of deliberations, a Suffolk Superior Court jury acquitted 17-year-old Marquis Browder of Dorchester yesterday of charges he murdered Giresse Diansweki as the refugee stood in the doorway of his Stanton Street three- decker on March 31, 2005.
Prosecutors said Browder killed Diansweki after the two had a dispute. Browder, then age 15 and an eighth-grader at Solomon Lewenberg Middle School in Mattapan, lived seven doors from Diansweki on the same street.
"Certainly, we're disappointed and frankly surprised by the jury's verdict," said Jake Wark, a spokesman for the Suffolk district attorney's office. "Based on the strong eyewitness testimony and the victim's dying declaration, we felt the case was very strong."
Wark said prosecutors introduced evidence that suggested Browder rang Diansweki's doorbell and was observed standing on the youth's front porch. Browder was arrested later that night after surrendering to authorities.
But Wark said authorities never found a weapon.
Neither Diansweki's relatives nor the lawyer representing Browder returned calls.
Diansweki had grown up with violence in Central Africa. His parents died in his native country's civil war. He and his siblings fled the country with help from family.
After a four-year wait and only months before he died, Diansweki and surviving members of his family were granted political asylum in Boston, where he was a junior at Hyde Park High School.
"He risked his life to leave the Democratic Republic of Congo during the civil war," Kathy Cloherty Henry, a lawyer and family friend who helped Diansweki and his family win asylum, told the Globe in 2005. "The fact that he survived that and made it out alive and then was gunned down -- it's just beyond tragic."
At school, Diansweki often wore bandanas over his long braids to match his basketball jerseys and
Prosecutors said the teenagers did not get along, but Browder's relatives insisted the teenager was incapable of murder.
After the boy's arraignment at Dorchester District Court, Kenny Thompson, his father, told the prosecutor: "He didn't do this. Where's the gun? Where's the proof?"
"He didn't live that life; he's a church boy," his father told the Globe at the time. "He's captain of his basketball team. They think that all black kids living around here get into that sort of thing. . . . That's the stereotype. They got the wrong kid."
Browder's grandmother, Willie Mae O'Neal, said he is a smart young man who played the drums at Friendship Baptist Church.
"He was learning to play the organ," she told the Globe. "He wouldn't do something like this." 