Federal murder trial begins for Kentucky man pardoned by Bevin in the same case
A Kentucky man pardoned on a state homicide conviction but now facing a federal murder charge killed a Knox County drug dealer while trying to rob him of pain pills and money, a federal prosecutor said Tuesday.
Patrick Baker targeted the drug dealer because he thought the man wouldn’t be able to report the robbery, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jenna E. Reed said during her opening argument in Baker’s trial.
“What are they going to do, call the law? They’re dope dealers,” Baker told an accomplice, Reed said.
Defense Attorney Steve Romines, however, told jurors Baker did not kill the drug dealer. Another man committed the murder and blamed it on Baker, and police bought the lie, Romines said.
Baker, 43, went on trial this week on a charge that he killed Donald Mills in a 2014 home invasion.
Attorneys chose a jury Monday and opening arguments started Tuesday.
A state jury convicted Baker in 2017 of reckless homicide in Mills’ death, and a judge sentenced him to 19 years in prison.
In December 2019, however, then-Gov. Matt Bevin commuted Baker’s sentence and pardoned him. The decision has been controversial because members of Baker’s family held a political fundraiser for Bevin in 2018, raising $21,500.
The woman dating Baker at that time later told the authorities she believed the fundraiser played a crucial role in getting Baker out of prison, but Bevin has adamantly denied the event had anything to do with the pardon.
A federal grand jury indicted Baker in May.
Baker’s pardon won’t be an issue in federal court. U.S. District Judge Claria Horn Boom said evidence about the pardon is not admissible.
An attorney for Baker argued at one hearing that the federal case violates the ban on trying someone twice for the same crime, but federal authorities said the charge Baker faces now is not the same one as in state court.
The federal charge includes an allegation that Baker shot and killed Mills as part of a drug crime. That was not an element of the charge in state court.
A judge allowed the federal charge to stand.
Defense attorneys have said in court documents that Baker has been a target of selective prosecution, but Boom also barred them from arguing that to the jury.
Reed told jurors Tuesday that Baker plotted to rob Mills after going with another man to buy pills from him in May 2014.
“He knew Donald Mills had a bunch of pills, and he wants a bunch of pills and a bunch of cash,” Reed said.
Baker had a Google Earth photo of Mills’ mobile home on his iPad, and bought plastic handcuffs at a Dollar General Store before invading Mills’ home, Reed said.
Police found the cuffs at Mills’s home, Reed said.
The two men who burst into Mills’ home posed as federal agents.
Shell casings left behind matched a 9mm pistol traced to Baker, and cell-phone data showed he was in the area of Mills’ home at the time of the crime, Reed said.
After the invasion, Baker told his ex-wife that something went wrong and he had to shoot Mills, Reed said.
Mills bled to death as his mother held him in the car as Mills’ wife, Charlene, drove to meet an ambulance, Reed said.
Romines painted a very different picture in his opening argument, saying a man named Adam Messer, a felon with a history of robbing drug dealers, is the who shot Mills and that Messer’s brother, Elijah, was involved in the crime.
“You’ll see that Patrick Baker didn’t commit this murder. Adam Messer did,” Romines told jurors.
Romines said Mills’ wife told police the man who shot her husband had brown eyes. Baker has blue eyes, but Messer has brown eyes, he said, showing the jury a photo of Messer.
A boy in Mills’ home when the shooting occurred told police one of the men involved had a skull and crossbones tattoo. Baker doesn’t have one, but Adam Messer does, Romines said.
“He’s the brown-eyed guy with the tattoo,” Romines said of Messer.
Romines said witnesses gave police inconsistent information and changed their stories, sometimes during the same interview.
Messer pointed police to Baker to divert suspicion from himself, and the police “just spoon it up,” Romines said.
Baker’s DNA was not on the plastic handcuffs found at the scene, and authorities didn’t test to see if Messer’s was, Romines said.
The first witness Tuesday was Mills’ widow, now named Charlene James, who was pregnant with the couple’s third child at the time of the homicide.
She recounted a harrowing story of two men kicking in the door of the family’s mobile home while she, Mills, their two sons and a friend of one son slept.
One man took Charlene James and the boys to one bedroom while the other man stood over Donald Mills, who sat on the couch in the living room.
“He continued to ask, ‘Where’s the dope, where’s the money?’ “ James said.
The man with Donald Mills took him to the master bedroom, where she heard shots.
“I was just shocked. I didn’t know if me and my boys was gonna live,” James said.
James said the two intruders left and she went to the master bedroom, where she found her husband propped against the wall in the bathroom. He had been shot twice in the chest and was pressing towels against his chest to try to stem the bleeding.
Mills told her he didn’t know who the intruders were. The importance of that is that he knew the two men the defense suggested committed the crime instead of Baker. Elijah Messer had been a drug customer and Adam Messer had gone to school with Mills, James said.
Mills’ mother, Phyllis Mills, who had come from next door, got Mills into James’ Ford Edge and they headed to meet an ambulance, but he lost consciousness on the way.
Mills was “pale and cold” when the ambulance crew met James on the road and put took Mills, according to the log sheet.
Baker could face up to life in prison if convicted. Prosecutors decided against seeking the death penalty for him if he is convicted.
This story was originally published August 10, 2021 at 11:33 AM.
