Neal Augenstein naugenstein wtop. Jurors on Monday watched videos showing Robinson entering a Virginia hotel room with two women on separate occasions, and leaving the next morning with a shopping cart covered in a sheet.
Garst said jurors would learn that Brown and Robinson agreed to meet at the Minnesota Avenue Metro stop. An employee at the Moon Inn Hotel in Alexandria will present receipts that show the two were in Room 12 before her body was found in a plastic container near the hotel.
Robinson was staying in Room of the Howard Johnson Hotel as part of his compensation for working in a nearby chicken processing plant, according to a hotel front desk employee. With prosecution witness Detective Randall Life, of the Harrisonburg Police Department, on the stand, Garst showed jurors hotel security video clips of each woman entering the room with Robinson. The next day, he would retrieve an empty shopping cart, bring it back to the room, load a body-sized item into the cart, wrapped in sheets and wheel it toward the tree line, near the back of the hotel.
As the jury watched the video of what appeared to be Smith being wheeled out of the hotel room, a family member stood and cursed Robinson. Deputies escorted the man who caused the disruption back into the courtroom to face the judge. The man identified himself as Dean Smith, a brother of Tonita Smith. Albertson immediately sentenced him to 10 days in jail for contempt of court and ordered that he not return to the courthouse during the trial. A syllable can get you 10 days.
Garst apologized to the judge for the outburst, saying Dean Smith was not on her witness list, and she would reinforce the importance of courtroom decorum with prosecution witnesses and family members.
