Trial ordered in murder case despite witness' tactics

Municipal Court Judge Patrick F. Dugan was outraged Tuesday after a witness - who himself had been wounded in a street shooting that killed a young man - tried to go south while on the stand.

It happened during a preliminary hearing in Commonwealth v. Siddiq Shelton. Shelton, 20, is charged with firing into a crowd of young people socializing on the porch of a Feltonville rowhouse, killing 20-year-old Elisha Bull and wounding four others.

Shelton was at the defense table, hands cuffed in front of him.

In the witness box about 30 feet away was Michael Benjamin, 23, hands also cuffed in front of him. He had been shot five times while sitting with Bull on the porch of 4902 N. Front St. at 12:19 a.m. July 28.

Glaring and snarling at Assistant District Attorney Carlos Vega for "threatening me to testify," Benjamin was doing his best to distance himself from the statement he had given detectives incriminating Shelton.

It didn't work. Dugan ordered Shelton to face trial on one count of murder and four counts of attempted murder - but not before he vented some anger.

"What are we doing as a society?" Dugan loudly asked, startling spectators who milled about on the other side of the bulletproof glass in the high-security courtroom.

"We have a 20-year-old here who was shot many times and a young man there who likes guns," Dugan said. "Where is society? Where is the shock that we'll let babies grow up so that their lives are meaning nothing?"

Dugan didn't get his answer, or even a motive for the mass shooting.

Under questioning by defense attorney Gary S. Server, Benjamin said it was too dark for him to see the shooter.

And it was raining.

And there was no light on the porch.

And he had smoked marijuana all day.

And he started drinking vodka as soon as he got to Front Street.

And took Percocet, too.

"Were you high?" asked Server.

"Yes," replied Benjamin.

"Were you seeing double?" asked the lawyer.

"Triple!" Benjamin snapped.

Benjamin, who said he has a juvenile rape conviction and is facing trial for several robberies, insisted that detectives concocted his identification of Shelton.

Benjamin, however, did acknowledge knowing Shelton since he was 10 and said there was once "bad blood" between them.

But all that was past, Benjamin told Vega: "When we were young, yes, but we shook hands like men and it was all over with."