Jurors begin deliberations in 2017 Homewood triple fatal fire trial

The victims didn’t have a chance.

Sandra Carter Douglas.

Shamira Staten.

Ch’yenne Manning.

None of them, said Deputy District Attorney Brian Catanzarite, played any role in a fight Martell Smith had early on the morning of Dec. 20, 2017. A fight, the prosecutor continued, that drove Smith into such a rage that he burned down the home of the man involved.

That man, Rico Carter, hadn’t yet returned to 7634 Bennett St. that night. His family — his mom, Carter Douglas, 58; his girlfriend, Staten, 21; and her daughter, Ch’yenne — were home.

And they were all killed in the fast-moving blaze started by gasoline poured on a living room couch.

“They paid the ultimate price for his vengeance,” Catanzarite told a jury on Wednesday.

Smith, 45, is on trial for three counts of criminal homicide and related charges this week before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Jill E. Rangos.

Following the conclusion of Smith’s testimony on Wednesday, the attorneys gave the jury of seven men and five women their closing arguments. Deliberations began after lunch.

If the jury finds Smith guilty of first-degree murder, the case will move into a penalty phase. The prosecution is seeking the death penalty.

Smith was arrested just hours after the fire, with witnesses telling police he bragged about starting it as he walked along nearby streets watching the commotion. He smelled of gasoline, investigators said, as did the car he was driving.

Video evidence showed that Smith got into a confrontation with Rico Carter at a bar called The Spot in Penn Hills earlier that night, and that Carter and another man attacked him outside.

Carter punched Smith several times. His face was bloodied, and the chain around his neck was broken.

Using city traffic cameras and additional security camera footage, police tracked Smith, who was driving a white Pontiac Grand Prix that he had borrowed, from the club back to Homewood. He stopped at a Sunoco gas station, bought a one-gallon gas can, filled it up for $2.89 and left.

During his testimony, Smith told the jury that he had stopped to get gas to fill his own car, an Acura, that had run out. He was going to a local store when he heard sirens and stopped to see the commotion.

It was during that time that two witnesses testified they heard Smith talk about setting the fire. One witness, Erica Hall, said she heard him say “‘See what happens when you (mess) with me.’”

Another heard him say, “‘Let it burn. Burn, baby, burn.’”

During his closing, defense attorney Randall McKinney attacked Hall’s credibility.

She told police that she got a phone call that night, telling her about the fire, which caused her to go the scene.

However, McKinney produced phone records that showed she received no calls during the relevant time frame.

Instead, he told the jury that Hall made up the statements by Smith to get out of her own charges after police stopped her the next day and found drugs.

“She knew by that point Martell Smith had been arrested,” McKinney said. “So she tells this story. After she’s done with her interview, she doesn’t go to jail. She goes home, and she’s never charged.”

The defense attorney questioned why the police would not have confirmed Hall’s story from that night.

“Either they were so incompetent they never bothered to check the records, or, in the alternative, they checked her records and knew they brought up an inconvenient truth.

“That is emblematic of this entire case,” McKinney continued. “When there’s an inconvenient truth the prosecution doesn’t want you to know, they either ignore it, or they minimize it.”

He told the jury that the timeline of the fire that night also makes it impossible for Smith to have set it.

The video time stamp of Smith buying the gasoline at the Sunoco station was 2:11 a.m., McKinney said.

The fire was set around 2:16 a.m. and the house was fully involved, as shown by a Pittsburgh police car dashboard camera, by 2:21 a.m.

McKinney told the jury it would be impossible for the fire to have spread that quickly. He cited testimony from one of the first firefighters on the scene, at 2:24 a.m., who said that “‘it appeared as thought the fire had been burning for a long time.’”

“If you think a long time is more than 13 minutes, then Martell Smith couldn’t have set the fire.”

But, during his closing argument, Catanzarite said the fire spread so quickly because of the amount of gasoline used; the fact that a window above the couch almost immediately broke when the fire started — feeding it with additional oxygen — and because of the house’s balloon construction.

“He poured a lake of gasoline in that living room and set it on fire,” Catanzarite said. “It’s like flipping a light switch.”

When Smith entered the house — through an unlocked front door, Catanzarite said — he crossed the front porch, where there were children’s toys and a bike, as well as past a teddy bear on the living room floor.

Catanzarite held up that singed and soot-covered to the jurors.

“Martell Smith didn’t care,” the prosecutor said. “This teddy bear was found … still saturated with gasoline.”

Catanzarite dismissed McKinney’s argument about how Hall learned of the fire, saying it didn’t matter. The other witness saw Smith at the scene bragging and acting belligerent, as well, the prosecutor said.

But more than that, Catanzarite continued, Smith had the chance to tell the police what happened that night. He was in a Pittsburgh police interview room for seven hours and 40 minutes later that day. Throughout that entire interview, Smith never once said he was getting gas for his Acura.

Instead, he told police he had walked to the gas station to get gas for the Pontiac he had borrowed — contradicting what the video evidence showed.

“When given the chance to tell the truth about what happened, he never said any of that,” Catanzarite said. “Why would he lie if he’s being confronted with a triple homicide?”

“Why. Would. He. Lie?” he continued, punctuating each word with a slap on the jury’s box.

“He’s guilty,” Catanzarite said, answering his own question. “He’s guilty. He walked into a residence. He knew someone lived there.

“He gave these people no chance whatsoever.”