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The Indiana Supreme Court will hold traveling oral arguments later this month at Hanover College to hear an appeal from a 2021 Fort-Wayne murder case, in which the defense argued the trial court erred by allowing witness testimony remotely via Zoom.
The hearing will be held at the college, located in Jefferson County, Sept. 30, at 10 a.m.
The case, Ajaylan M. Shabazz v. State of Indiana, arises from the Allen Superior Court, where a jury found Shabazz guilty of murdering Tiffany Ferris under an accomplice liability theory, a conviction that garnered a 63-year prison sentence.
On appeal to the Indiana Court of Appeals earlier this year, Shabazz argued several issues, notably that the lower court erred by allowing a witness to testify remotely during the trial and whether the evidence was sufficient to support Shabazz’s murder conviction.
But given the “overwhelming evidence of Shabazz’s guilt and finding no reversible error in the trial court’s rulings,” the appellate court upheld Shabazz’s murder conviction.
Judge Elizabeth Tavitas, in a separate, concurring opinion, disagreed with the majority’s finding that good cause was shown to allow a witness’s remote testimony, saying there were “no such public policy considerations sufficient to permit Jones to testify remotely.” But she wrote that she considered the error to be harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, and affirmed the murder conviction, nonetheless.
Shabazz was then granted a petition of transfer to the state’s supreme court, again questioning whether the court erred in permitting remote testimony and whether sufficient evidence was presented to support Shabazz’s murder conviction.
Shabazz is requesting that the high court reverse his conviction and that he be discharged.
Alternatively, he requests that he be granted a new trial.
According to court documents, in May 2021, Shabazz, Ferris, Ariona Darling and Dustin Blair intermittently used a Fort-Wayne motel room unbeknownst to the motel’s management for shelter and a place to use drugs.
On the evening of May 9, Shabazz and Darling walked to a Shell gas station near the motel, where Shabazz met Terry Smith for the first time. Smith first asked Shabazz about Darling’s availability, but Shabazz indicated that Darling was his fiancée. From there, the conversation turned to trading drugs, and Smith drove both Shabazz and Darling back to the motel.
Once there, the three entered the room through a window to find Ferris and Blair, who were using crystal methamphetamine and fentanyl.
After Blair and Shabazz left the room for a period of time, tensions in the room escalated after Darling accused Ferris of stealing her drugs. When Ferris denied taking them, Darling became angry and began “beating on” Ferris and made her strip so that she could search her for allegedly stolen drugs, according to court documents.
At some point during the altercation, Darling messaged Shabazz, who returned to the room to find Darling “[o]ut of control” and beating Ferris. From there, Shabazz also began attacking Ferris by picking her up and slamming her onto the floor, kicking and stomping on her head. During all of this, Smith waited around and occupied himself on his phone.
According to the appellate court’s opinion, Shabazz and Darling picked up a still-alive Ferris and carried her to the bathtub. Smith briefly left the room to go to a store, but upon returning, he found Ferris naked and dead in the bathtub. Shabazz and Darling attempted to clean the scene, and Smith assisted them in disposing of evidence.
After the others had left the scene, Blair returned to find Ferris’ body, which prompted him to ask a Shell employee to call law enforcement.
Shabazz, Smith and Darling fled and were all arrested in Indianapolis two days later.
While in custody, Shabazz made several incriminating statements to various inmates, including Blair and Miquan Jones, whose testimony Shabazz attempted to influence by having a guard pass him a threatening note.
During Shabazz’s trial in 2024, Jones had been moved to a Indiana Department of Correction facility four hours from Fort Wayne, and given that the state requested he be permitted to testify, the trial court granted the request over the defense’s objection, so Jones testified remotely over Zoom.
Also among the defense’s disapprovals in the trial was the admission of Darling’s death by suicide in jail. The court allowed the parties to tell the jury she had died, but not how she died.
The case can be followed here.
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