Jury Finds Ft. Washington Man Guilty of Murder in 2007 Ivy City Slaying

WASHINGTON—A 21-year-old Ft. Washington, Maryland man, Cordell Smith, was found guilty late yesterday by a Superior Court jury of second degree murder while armed, possession of a firearm during a crime of violence, and carrying a pistol without a license (outside home or place of business) for the March 28, 2007 murder of Rayshard D. Austin, inside of the Ivy City Apartment Complex at 1060 Mount Olivet Road, NE, announced U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor.

Smith, of Brinkley Road in Ft. Washington, Maryland, will be sentenced on July 17, 2009, before the Honorable Geoffrey Alprin. Smith faces up to 60 years in prison.

The government’s evidence established that on or about March 28, 2007, Cordell Smith shot and killed Rayshard Austin inside an apartment building at 1060 Mount Olivet Road, NE, Washington, D.C., following a verbal altercation over the attention of a woman. As the decedent walked into the apartment building towards Smith, Smith retreated a full flight of stairs into a basement level apartment, whose door was unlocked and opened by one of its occupants. Smith retrieved a gun from the kitchen cabinet, then went back out the apartment, traversed the full flight of stairs again, and confronted Mr. Austin with a handgun, shooting him immediately, before Mr. Austin could even get a word out. After killing Mr. Austin, the defendant then fled the building, and made good his escape in a vehicle owned/operated by him.

Mr. Austin’s body was transported to the D.C. Medical Examiner’s Office, where an autopsy was performed by Marie-Lydie Y. Pierre-Louis, who determined that the cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds to the chest and thigh. Dr. Pierre-Louis ruled the manner of death a homicide.

In announcing the verdict, U.S. Attorney Taylor commended several officers of the Metropolitan Police Department, including Detectives Edward Truesdale, Dwayne Partman, Robert Arrington, Anthony Paci, Sean Caine, Jonathan Clingerman, and Michael F. Murphy, Sergeant John P. Johnson, Mobile Crime Lab Technicians R. Steven Griffin, Charles Egan, Tony Nwani, Charles Graham and John Holzwart (Retired), Patrol Officers Duane Davis, Darrell Young, Franklin Crews and Travis Weston, Latent Fingerprint Examiner Barbara Evans, Firearms Examiner Michael Mulderig, and Chief Medical Examiner Marie-Lydie Y. Pierre-Louis, MD. Lastly, he thanked Larry Grasso of the Intelligence Section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Paralegals Ethel Noble and Fern Rhedrick, Legal Assistants Mary Doster and Debra Joyner, Victim Witness Advocate Marcia Rinker, and Litigation Services Technicians Thomas “Ron” Royal, Kim Rich and Tyrone Bowie, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Robert J. Feitel and Keith Becker, who investigated, indicted and tried the case.