Demarcus Chandler was sentenced to death in Alabama for the murder for hire of Raven Swain. According to court documents Demarcus Chandler would pay another man, Solomon Minatee (who has yet to stand trial) to murder Raven Swain as Chandler believed while he was serving time that his girlfriend had ripped him off
Raven Swain body would be found inside of her vehicle and the twenty four year old woman had been fatally shot. Soon after her murder Demarcus Chandler would send out a social media message reading “God forgive. Papa don’t.”. Police would get a warrant to search Chandler phone he had hidden inside of his jail cell
Demarcus Chandler would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Demarcus Chandler Case
Demarcus Chandler, convicted in the 2020 murder-for-hire killing of his girlfriend, was sentenced to death on Tuesday.
A Jefferson County jury unanimously convicted Chandler, 27, of capital murder in the shooting death of 24-year-old Raven Swain in a Birmingham park.
The jury deliberated about three hours before handing down the guilty verdict.
After hours of hearing from defense psychologists about Chandler’s troubled childhood and possible brain injury from a gunshot wound to the head when he was teen, the jury took only 15 minutes to sentence him to death.
Ten jurors voted in favor of execution, and two jurors voted for life in prison without parole.
Jefferson County Circuit Judge Michael Streety then formally sentenced Chandler to death.
Demarcus Chandler showed no emotion.
The jury of seven women and five men found that Chandler, who has a lengthy criminal history and is locked up in state prison on parole violations from previous crimes, hired 28-year-old Solomon Minatee III to kill Swain.
Demarcus Chandler, they say, allegedly orchestrated the murder, because he believed she had “ripped him off” while he was in prison.
‘Raven Lynette Swain’s life mattered.’
Moments after Swain was killed in Birmingham’s Underwood Park, authorities said Chandler posted this to Facebook: “God forgive. Papa don’t.”
Swain’s mother, Lolita Braxton, referenced that Facebook post when she gave her victim impact statement in court Tuesday.
“No words can truly describe the heartbreak my family and I have carried since the day she was murdered,” Braxton told jurors.
“Raven was more than just a daughter. She was the light in our lives.”
“Raven was loved by so many people,” Braxton said. “Her smile, her kindness and her spirit brought joy around us.”
Swain at the time of her death was a sterile processing technician for surgical instruments.
“She had a dream. She had plans to go and be a traveling sterile processor,” Braxton said.
“She tried to change her life from the decision she had chosen to deal with that person.”
“Her dreams, her plans and her future were stolen in an instant by a senseless and heartless act,” she said. “Every birthday, every holiday, every ordinary day is filled with the ache of her absence.”
Braxton told jurors that her family has been forever changed by the murder.
“There is no sentence strong enough to undo what was done, but I ask this court to remember that Raven Lynette Swain’s life mattered,” she said.
“The choices of the persons responsible for her death shattered more than just one life. They shattered our entire family.”
To Demarcus Chandler, Braxton said, “You caused her death, but you will never erase her. God is in control. Not Papa.”
The trial began April 7, and jurors heard from 33 witnesses and saw roughly 250 pieces of evidence.
Demarcus Chandler exercised his right to not take the stand during the trial, and the defense team did not call any witnesses.
Minatee has not yet gone to trial.
‘Killers are not born. They’re made.’
After the guilty verdict, a separate “mini trial” was held to determine Chandler’s sentencing.
The defense team asked that the jury show mercy on Chandler and sentence him to life in prison without parole.
They pointed to multiple childhood traumas including a father in prison, a mother who struggled with drug use and depression, a head injury at the age of 6 when he was hit a car while riding his bicycle, and a gunshot wound to the head when he was injured in what he believed to be a drive-by shooting targeting him.
“Killers are not born,” said public defender Caty Swindall. “They’re made.”
Demarcus Chandler, his attorneys said, also struggled throughout school with writing and reading, ADHD, and changed drastically after he went to prison at age 16 following convictions for robbery and kidnapping at a Birmingham McDonalds.
“Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done,” Swindall said. “By your verdict, Demarcus will never leave prison. He’ll die there.”
“Mercy is a gift,” she said. “Mercy is given to those who don’t deserve it.”
Chandler’s twin brother and his aunt testified on his behalf. His twin tearfully hugged Chandler after his testimony.
Deputy District Attorney Charissa Henrichs urged jurors to sentence Demarcus Chandler to death, noting that he was already in prison when he not only orchestrated Swain’s murder but also made phone calls suggesting Minatee be killed to keep him from testifying.
And, she said, he was in prison when he allegedly ordered the killing of a state prison lieutenant who confiscated his cellphone after Swain’s murder.
“He’s elevated himself to the status of God Almighty,” Henrichs said. “Nothing changes for him if he just goes back to prison. He deserves to die.”
She also pointed out what she said was Chandler’s lack of remorse.
“Have you seen any tears from that man?” she said. “He smirked when Raven (crime scene and autopsy photos) was shown and that’s who he is.”
“He was smirking in court,” Henrichs said, “because that’s who he is.”
Henrichs, Isabella Colombo and Neal Zarzour prosecuted the case.
Demarcus Chandler was represented by the Jefferson County Public Defender’s Office, including Blair Shores and Swindall.
Following the verdict and sentencing, District Attorney Danny Carr thanked the Birmingham Police Department, his staff of prosecutors and the jury.
“Make no mistake, the jury spoke loud and clear and about the ramifications of the heinous act committed against that wonderful young girl,” Carr said.
“I hope the family can get to back some sense of normalcy and honoring her memory.”
‘….to inflict as much pain and terror as possible.’
The deadly shooting happened shortly after 7 p.m. on Tuesay, July 28, 2020, in Underwood Park on Birmingham’s Southside.
Swain, who worked at UAB Hospital, was found unresponsive in her Hyundai Sonata, which had rolled into foliage after she was shot.
She was slumped over in the driver’s seat leaning toward the passenger’s seat.
Her car doors were locked, and she had been shot under the left arm, with the bullets penetrating her heart and lung.
Swain was pronounced dead on the scene.
Testimony throughout the trial showed that on the day that Swain was killed, Minatee sent Chandler a message with a screenshot shot of his Cash App.
Then, less than an hour after Swain was killed, Minatee sent Demarcus Chandler a message saying, “Bruh, we need the money. The work is done.”
Following the murder, the Alabama Department of Corrections, at the request of police, searched Chandler’s cell and recovered a contraband cell phone there as well.
After obtaining search warrants for the phones and examining them, police said, they found multiple phone calls in the minutes before and after Swain’s death to one number that they later determined to be a cell phone used by Minatee.
Technology also placed that phone to have been in the area of Underwood Park at the time of Swain’s killing.
Testimony showed that Demarcus Chandler texted Minatee at 6:46 p.m. saying, “I’m on the phone with Raven.”
At 6:57 p.m., Chandler texted Minatee, “I’ll call you when she pulls up.”
Then, at 7:02 p.m., Chandler texted Minatee, “She out there.”
Chandler is also facing a conspiracy to commit murder charge after the home of an Alabama Department of Corrections’ lieutenant was shot up last August.
The lieutenant, at the direction of Birmingham homicide investigators, was the one who found the contraband phone in Chandler’s prison cell that prosecutors say was used to orchestrate Swain’s murder.
Testimony throughout the week showed Demarcus Chandler believed that Swain had taken $8,000 from him, and “thrown his dope out of a window.”
The two had a tumultuous, “toxic” relationship, prosecutors said, that clearly met the criteria for the cycle of domestic violence.
“If somebody crosses this defendant, in his mind they must pay a price,” Zarzour said Monday in closing arguments.
“Raven Swain paid the ultimate price,” Zarzour said. “All because God forgive but Papa don’t.”
Testimony and evidence, much of it through text messages between Chandler and Swain and Chandler and Minatee, showed that Demarcus Chandler sent Swain to Underwood Park that night under the guise that she was doing a drug deal at his direction.
“Raven had no idea she was being directed to her death,” Zarzour said. “He walked her right into it.”
Chandler’s defense attorney claimed that Minatee alone was responsible for Swain’s death, and said she was killed while she was doing a drug deal with Minatee.
“Solomon Minatee had no motive to kill Raven Swain,” Zarzour told jurors. “He didn’t know her. She didn’t know him.”
“Only one man had the motive to murder Raven Swain,” he said.
Shores, in his closing arguments, said prosecutors had not met the state’s burden to prove Chandler is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
“The state’s case is a bunch of hot air,” he said, likening it to a hot air balloon. “The case gets bigger but there’s no weight.”
At the time of Swain’s death, Demarcus Chandler was still awaiting trial on felony charges of domestic violence strangulation/suffocation in which Swain was the victim.
Swain had also in 2019 sought a protection from abuse order against Chandler, citing multiple examples of violence including pistol-whipping and shots fired at her car.
That request was ultimately dismissed.
Swain’s mother testified at trial shots had been fired outside her home as Chandler was leaving and, in another incident, shots had been fired into her home, grazing Swain’s 13-year-old sister.
In some of the text messages shown in court, Swain and Chandler told each other they loved each other.
Others were more hostile, with one text from Demarcus Chandler to Swain saying, “Ho, Ima try calling one more time and if you don’t pick up, oh well.”
Another said, “Bitch, call me now.”
There were several messages from Demarcus Chandler that indicated his intent to kill her, Henrichs said.
In one message, Henrichs said, Chandler told Swain, “Play with me little girl and go get you some life insurance.”
In a Facebook message to someone else, Henrichs said, Chandler wrote to that person, “This ho going to make me kill her.”
Prosecutors also said Chandler’s calls to Swain’s family members and friends in the moments after she was killed proved his involvement.
To Swain’s mother, Chandler said, “Are you looking for Raven?”
To Swain’s best friend, Henrichs said, Chandler wrote, “Bitch, you need to get up. Your best friend is in Southtown dead.”
“How the hell would he know that?” Henrichs said. “He knew it because he set it up.”
Because of Chandler’s calls to family and friends, she said, the family arrived at the crime scene at almost the same time as police.
“It’s horrific that he called them,” she said. “He had to inflict as much pain and terror as possible.”
“He took great pleasure in making sure,” Henrichs said, “that he had something to do with it.”