COURTS

Jury begins deliberations in fatal 2016 East Providence stabbing

Katie Mulvaney
kmulvane@providencejournal.com

PROVIDENCE — Threats and insults on social media escalated into a deadly confrontation on an East Providence sidewalk in 2016.

Now a jury will decide if the killing came in self defense or with premeditation.

A jury of nine women and three men began deliberations Friday afternoon in the murder trial of 31-year-old James Stevens, of East Providence. Authorities accuse Stevens, who took the stand in own defense, of viciously stabbing Jasper Williams to death Dec. 10, 2016.

In closing arguments, Assistant Attorney General Daniel Carr Guglielmo dismissed Stevens' assertion that he stabbed Williams some 18 times, including blows to the back, side and head, in self-defense.

"Knife through the skull. That's murder in the first degree," Guglielmo in asking jurors to convict Stevens of the most serious crime.

Guglielmo urged the jury to consider that Stevens fled after the stabbing, leaving his girlfriend and child behind, and got his hair cut before being caught in a border town in Texas.

"His actions after the murder speak much more than his words," said Guglielmo, who prosecuted the case with Special Assistant Attorney General Robert Johnson.

Just days before the fatal stabbing, Williams was released on parole on felony-assault charges related to the stabbing of two East Providence brothers, Jared and Jacob Burrows, in 2012.

It's that crime that John MacDonald took aim at Friday in a packed courtroom.

"We know he has a hair-trigger temper," MacDonald said of Williams.

"We know that temper is uncontrollable," MacDonald said.

Williams insulted Stevens' girlfriend and the mother of his son on Instagram in the hours leading up to the confrontation at Warren and Lyon Avenues.

Stevens has insisted he went there to "talk" with Williams at the apartment Williams shared with his girlfriend and their 4-year-old son, and that it was Williams who threw the first punch and then pulled a knife. Stevens says he struck Williams, who stood 6 feet tall and weighed 210 pounds, repeatedly without realizing that he was stabbing him with a knife he had wrested away.

"James Stevens never intended or wanted this to happen," MacDonald said.

"He didn't bring the knife. ... He's doing it to save himself," said MacDonald, who represented Stevens with Katie Nee.

MacDonald asked jurors to find that the stabbing came in self defense and to acquit Stevens.

Guglielmo rejected Stevens' testimony as "ridiculous" and completely lacking in credibility. Plus, Guglielmo said self-defense can only be argued by a defendant who didn't initiate the confrontation. It took Stevens eight minutes to drive to Williams' place, he said.

"He came over for one thing only, and that is to teach him a lesson," he said.