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As JoJo Lee Brandstatt stood on a snow-covered West Valley City golf course that night in February 2009, the prosecutor said, Spencer Isaiah Cater's words were likely the last he ever heard.
"Shoot him! Shoot him!" Salt Lake County prosecutor Nathan Evershed alleged Cater said just before a 14-year-old friend shot Brandstatt three times, execution style, for wearing the red of a rival gang.
Nearly three years after the group of gang members left Brandstatt to bleed to death as he crawled up a hill on the golf course, the trial for Cater, now 20, began Tuesday in 3rd District Court.
Antonie "Hunter" Farani confessed to the Feb. 6, 2009, killing of Brandstatt during a videotaped interview with West Valley City police, according to prior court testimony. The teen, now 16, said he was high on marijuana and pressured to shoot the teen by Cater, who allegedly believed the victim "knew too much."
As the week-long trial, before Judge William Barrett, opened Tuesday, Cater's defense attorney refuted the notion that Cater encouraged the shooting.
"They are trying to blur the people who were there with him," attorney Chad Steur said, pointing to a photograph of Farani. "He decided he was going to kill Mr. Brandstatt," Steur said. "He decided where to kill him. He pulled out the gun and fired. They were all his choices, his actions, his decisions."
Gregory Brown, 21, has testified Brandstatt was targeted in part because he wore a red shirt and claimed allegiance to a Norteño gang, a rival of the defendants' Crips gang.
Brown said he was kidnapped by the four defendants when he met them at a West Valley City Wendy's to trade marijuana for a gun. The group robbed him and said if Brown was able to get $2,000 by the end of the night through robberies, they wouldn't kill him, he told the court.
According to Brown, he called Brandstatt, who agreed to meet up with the group at Kearns Junior High School with the address of a gang member to rob, he said. When he arrived, Brandstatt was wearing a red T-shirt and red shoelaces, a color that indicated a connection to Norteño gang members. Brown alleged Farani said, "Let's just finish off this Norte."
The defendants drove to the golf course where Brandstatt was shot.
"I just shot your boy," Brown recalled Farani as saying.
"He just stood there and took it like a G [a gangster]," Cater added, according to Brown. "He just asked where he needed to stand."
The group then allegedly coerced Brown into using a pellet gun to rob three convenience stores afterward. The defense attorney argued Brown was a willing participant and not a victim.
Cater faces first-degree felony charges of murder, aggravated kidnapping and aggravated robbery. Each of the eight counts carries a possible punishment of up to life in prison.
The crime, in review
In addition to accused triggerman Antonie "Hunter" Farani, 16, on Nov. 23, three others were charged in connection with JoJo Lee Brandstatt's murder: Shardise "Kaiso" Malaga, 20; Spencer Isaiah Cater, 20; and Jeremiah "Jay" Ha'k Williamson, 27. Police say Farani, who was barely 14 the day of Brandstatt's murder, told them he was high on marijuana and pressured to pull the trigger by Cater, who allegedly believed the victim "knew too much" about a kidnapping and a series of planned robberies.
Two defendants in the case have pleaded guilty to their participation in the crime.
Williamson pleaded guilty to first-degree felony murder and was ordered to 15 years to life in prison. Williamson admitted to driving the group around the evening of the crimes and drove Brandstatt to the golf course where he died.
Malaga pleaded guilty to her role in the crime in March 2010 and was sentenced to serve 15 years to life in prison.