Mar. 7—A police affidavit in the murder case against James Dexter Brown Jr. quotes three witnesses as saying they saw Brown shoot Kenny "Banga" Sullivan during a confrontation between members of rival gangs after a 2008 concert in Hartford and quotes four witnesses as saying Brown admitted the shooting to them.

COLD CASE TRIAL

DEFENDANT: James Dexter Brown Jr., 32, who has lived with his mother in East Hartford and is known as "Decky"

CHARGE: Murder

STATUS: Free on $1 million bond but confined to a wheelchair due to gunshot wounds suffered eight days after the 2008 killing he is accused of committing

But a visit Monday to Brown's trial in Hartford Superior Court demonstrated dramatically that it is even harder to prosecute a gang murder case in court than for police to build the case.

It came out that Judge Nuala E. Droney has issued civil arrest warrants for three people the prosecutors want to call as witnesses who have failed to show up.

Moreover, at the judge's direction, a clerk read sworn statements previously given to police by two witnesses who did testify at the trial. The judge ordered that because the witnesses had failed to testify to information in their statements.

The trial of Brown, 33, who has lived in East Hartford and is confined to a wheelchair as a result of multiple gunshot wounds he suffered eight days after Sullivan's killing, is being held under exceptionally tight security.

It is standard procedure for every member of the public who enters a Connecticut courthouse to go through a metal detector at the door. During the Brown trial, judicial marshals are also using hand-held metal detectors to check everyone who goes into the courtroom — every time they go in. The jury heard one witness give live testimony against Brown on Monday.

Tykwell Walton, 30, an independent trucker who admitted he was a member of the Money Green Bedroc gang in Hartford in 2008, testified that Brown was a member of the same gang.

Walton testified that he visited Brown at Brown's mother's house in East Hartford several years after the fatal shooting. He said Brown admitted committing the shooting, which happened after a series of fights during a radio station's "Hot Jam" concert at the XL Center, calling it "my work."

Walton didn't immediately tell police what Brown had said. He did so only after he was arrested on federal crack cocaine trafficking charges, when he was facing a 10-year mandatory minimum prison sentence. In return for help getting a lenient sentence, Walton agreed to tell investigators everything he knew about crime in Hartford, including giving an interview to Hartford police about the fatal shooting of Sullivan.

Nine days after that interview, Walton acknowledged under questioning by defense lawyer Robert P. Pickering, U.S. District Judge Michael P. Shea sentenced him to 13 months in prison. The judge was legally authorized to ignore the "mandatory minimum" sentence and impose the far more lenient prison term only because federal prosecutors had filed a motion notifying him of Walton's "substantial assistance" in ongoing investigations.

One of the statements read to the jury Monday was given in 2015 by Rakheem Lewis, who then lived in Enfield. Lewis said he was with the victim, whom he called "Banga," at the time of the shooting, and saw Brown, known as "Decky," shoot him.

"I am positive it was 'Decky' who shot 'Banga,'" Lewis said in the statement.

The other witness whose statement was read to the jury, Iran Harris, said only that he saw Sullivan walk to the middle of the street, facing "three thin Black guys" before the shooting started. Brown is Black and is now thin, but no evidence was presented Monday as to his weight before he became paraplegic.

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