By Nathan Gorenstein
The Philadelphia Inquirer
PHILADELPHIA — Two people lay on the pale oak floor. In the photographs, one was face down, the other on his side. Both were in pools of blood, and both were dead.
That was the last evidence presented to a federal-court jury before the eight women and four men started deliberations Monday on whether Maurice Phillips, 38, already convicted of ordering a hit on a government informant, should get life or the death penalty.
In a toughly worded final argument, Assistant U.S. Attorney Linwood C. Wright disdainfully dismissed defense arguments that Phillips had grown up in a tough Newark, N.J., neighborhood filled with drug dealers and that his execution would leave his three children fatherless.
Wright noted that Phillips had gone to parochial schools and obtained an accounting degree, and that his father was a public school vice principal. He also said Phillips, convicted of running a $31 million cocaine ring that stretched to Texas, was “the type of individual” who provided drugs to neighborhood dealers.
Phillips “struck at the heart of the justice system” by hiring a cousin to slay Chineta Glanville, 50, a Montgomery County woman who was cooperating with federal agents after years of laundering money for Phillips’ drug gang.
Before finishing his closing argument, Wright showed on courtroom monitors a photo of Phillips holding a champagne bottle in the air while he danced at a party paid for with drug funds. He then showed photographs of the two victims.
The hit man, Phillips’ first cousin Bryant Phillips, also killed Glanville’s godson, Dane King, 29, who was at the Wyndmoor home to fix a computer.
Wright conceded the government had to make a deal with Bryant Phillips, agreeing to a sentence of 10 years in exchange for his testimony.
Maurice Phillips’ attorneys have said it would be unfair to execute their client when the man who pulled the trigger will live.
Wright said it was more important to convict Maurice Phillips. “That’s the deal we have to make,” Wright said, even as he called the witness a “low-life” and “miscreant.”
“Without Bryant Phillips’ testimony, no one ever would have been brought to justice,” he said. The plea agreement has not yet been accepted by a federal judge.
Dressed in a FedEx hat and shirt provided by a company employee, Bryant Phillips knocked on Glanville’s door at 11 a.m. June 25, 2002. King answered and offered to accept the package, but Phillips said he had to deliver it directly to Glanville.
Phillips testified that he walked into the house, shot her twice in the head as she lay on the floor, and then killed King.
Under federal guidelines, Phillips faces the death penalty because the murders were for hire and were premeditated. Wright also argued that if left alive, Phillips could order hits on other witnesses with what prosecutors contend is $11 million in unaccounted drug proceeds.
Defense attorney Jean Barrett argued that federal prisons can limit Phillips’ ability to communicate with outsiders by placing him in a unit with special security.
She told jurors that allowing him to live out his life term would not amount to excusing Phillips’ crimes.
“Maurice Phillips made choices,” Barrett said. “That’s what got him here today.” But under federal sentencing law, he will never be released from a life sentence. “Death is not necessary here,” she said, “death is not the only answer.”
Copyright 2010 Philadelphia Newspapers, LLC