La Plata, MD – It’s a little unusual for a Charles County assistant state’s attorney to take the witness stand, but Jeremy Widder found himself in that position Monday, April 25 in the show cause hearing for Nahvarj Elijah Ray Mills, 22, who was sentenced to eight years in prison for second-degree assault Nov. 25, 2014.
Ultimately, visiting Judge C. Philip Nichols Jr. said he wanted to hear from an investigator in the case who wasn’t present in court.
“I’m in the middle of a three-month trial,” Nichols told Charles County Assistant State’s Attorney Frank Granados and Defense Attorney William Renahan. “I thought this was going to be a fairly simple case, but we’re not going to get all of this done today.”
Renahan asked for the hearing claiming that Widder withheld a witness during the August 2014 trial which would have corroborated his client’s testimony that the rape charge his client was exonerated of and the assault he was convicted of never took place.
He stressed that the victim in the case lied under oath that she was a virgin the time the alleged assault took place and that his client and the victim in the case had consensual sex before her birthday in July 2012 when she claimed Mills got her drunk and raped her.
A Charles County Circuit Court jury found Mills not guilty of rape but did convict him of second-degree assault.
Calling Mills a “self-centered, narcissistic young man,” Charles County Circuit Court Judge Helen I. Harrington said the defendant exhibited “manipulative, ruthless behavior whose actions show no signs of insight or remorse” at his November 2014 sentencing.
She sentenced him to 10 years, suspending all but eight years, telling him, “If I was sentencing you for rape you would be getting 20 years. I remember vividly how arrogant you were during the trial.”
Renahan called Janelle Slye to the witness stand Monday. She testified under oath that when she knocked on the bedroom door in July 2012 she found Mills naked from the waist down with a condom on his penis, the victim taken from the waist down on the bed, giggling and laughing.
“I told her ‘this is not funny,’ ” Slye testified.
She said when she initially talked to Widder in the state’s attorney’s office, she claimed she told him, “I didn’t know about no rape.
“I told him there was no rape,” she added. “I’m not going to lie.”
Renahan asked, “when she testified she was a virgin before her birthday, was that a lie?”
“Yes,” Slye answered.
“Did the state call you to testify?” he asked.
“No,” she replied.
Mills took the stand, and was asked by Renahan if he had assaulted the victim.
“No,” he said. “Everything was consensual.”
“She called me and said she wanted to party on her birthday,” Mills said. “We had had sex before,” he maintained.
“If she said she was a virgin…” Renahan asked.
“She’s lying,” Mills said.
Granados called Widder to the stand to testify for the state.
Widder said he did not call Slye during the trial because when he initially interviewed her she gave him a lot of “I don’t knows” and refused to make eye contact with him.
“We felt to call her would not help our case,” he said. “She was not a very detailed witness.”
The judge asked if the state could get the lead investigator in the case to testify as well.
“I really want to hear from that witness,” he said, instructing both sides to meet with the assignments office and come up with a date when they could come back to court.
Contact Joseph Norris at joe.norris@thebaynet.com