WOODLAND — Stricken with diabetes and a host of other ailments, Kevin Gerard Seery sought an exit to his suffering and misery, the attorney for his accused killer said Monday in Yolo Superior Court.
However, “he knew he couldn’t take his life at his own hand,” Deputy Public Defender Dan Hutchinson said in his opening statement for defendant James Elron Mings’ trial. He said Seery began asking friends from Davis’ homeless community to help him end his life, but — knowing the legal ramifications of assisted suicide — all of them turned him down.
“It’s going to have to be somebody who is more naive, someone he can manipulate, someone he can provoke,” Hutchinson told the six-man, six-woman jury. “He finds a perfect candidate in Elron Mings.”
Mings, 38, is on trial for first-degree murder in connection with the death of Seery, 42, whose body was found in his College Square Apartments unit on Oct. 1, 2011. In addition to strangling him, someone had blocked his airway with a portion of a tube sock, gauze and antibacterial wipes.
But Hutchinson contends it wasn’t Mings who caused Seery to take his final breaths.
Rather, he laid the blame on a third man who was in Seery’s apartment that night — Tom McDermott, a homeless man who introduced Mings to his chronically ill friend.
“Elron wears his heart on his sleeve, and that is clear to anyone who has met him,” Hutchinson said in his opening remarks. The eldest of four children in a broken family, he came to Davis by way of Woodland, where attempts to rekindle a long-lost love had ended badly.
His bad luck continued in Davis, with odd behavior costing Mings a job at a local food store and housing at a homeless shelter, according to Hutchinson.
But McDermott “seems to accept him for who he is,” Hutchinson said. He introduced Mings to Seery, and the two men shared long conversations on subjects ranging from love to telepathy to magic.
Mings “never felt such a connection to another human being,” Hutchinson said. “What he did not realize was this connection was a one-way street.”
Hutchinson claims Seery created an emotionally charged situation that caused Mings to act “under emotion and passion,” squeezing Seery’s neck until he lost consciousness in the bedroom of the J Street apartment while McDermott watched TV in an adjoining room. Mings later walked into the Davis police station and confessed, saying he also stuffed gauze into Seery’s mouth after his body slumped to the floor.
But Hutchinson contends that Seery “was very much alive” when Mings left the bedroom, and that while the shell-shocked defendant sat in the living room, McDermott added the sock and wipes into Seery’s mouth to finish the job without Mings’ knowledge.
“Tom McDermott alone is responsible for the death of Kevin Seery,” Hutchinson said. “Elron Mings was set up, and he was set up from the beginning.”
Hutchinson also pointed fingers at the Davis Police Department, saying the agency ignored evidence that pointed away from Mings as a suspect. He said while his client is indeed guilty of a crime, it’s attempted voluntary manslaughter, not murder.
McDermott has been subpoenaed as a witness in the trial, but whether he will testify or assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination remains to be seen.
The first defense witness, John Chester, said he befriended Seery about 10 years ago, in his healthier days. One day, he recalled, Seery approached him and asked “how would I go about asking friends to help him quit living?”
“I said, friends don’t ask friends those kinds of questions, and I turned around and walked out his door,” Chester said. “I don’t think that’s a position you put your friends into.”
Subsequent testimony Monday morning focused largely around the piece of sock found lodged in Seery’s throat — the tube portion of an athletic sock, the bottom part of which eventually was recovered from the dead man’s apartment.
Clean and new in appearance, the sock was mostly white, with black and red striping near the toe area — similar to other socks found in Seery’s bedroom dresser, testified Lauren Hartfield, a Davis Police Department community services officer who assisted with the crime-scene investigation.
Later that month, Davis police detectives searched a homeless encampment near the former Hunt-Wesson plant north of Covell Boulevard, where they found a campsite with Mings’ belongings, as well as a blue tarp and other items that one detective identified as being McDermott’s, Hartfield said.
Near the tarp, Hartfield said, was a discarded pile of socks — one of which had black and red striping similar to the ones in Seery’s apartment, Hartfield recalled. But while she photographed the socks, none were collected as evidence.
“We didn’t feel it had any evidentiary value to this case,” Hartfield said. Also, “we weren’t positive it was (McDermott’s) campsite.”
Under cross-examination by prosecutor Martha Holzapfel, Hartfield recalled seeing as many as a dozen campsites in the area that day, and the socks weren’t the only personal items that were strewn about.
“So did you have any information that connected those socks to that tarp?” Holzapfel asked.
“No,” Hartfield replied.
Testimony continued today in Judge Timothy Fall’s courtroom. The case is expected to go to the jury by the end of this week.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene