Second trial opens for man charged in Wilkinsburg 'execution'

As the rest of his family watched a Thursday night Steelers game in November 2019, Raymond Jackson was upstairs, caring for his 11-month-old granddaughter.

Suddenly, around 10:20 p.m., two gunmen burst into the Wilkinsburg home.

One of them kicked down the bedroom door upstairs and found Jackson inside, holding the little girl.

Jackson put her on the bed, police said, and the attacker shot him four times, killing him.

On Thursday, that man, identified by police as Brandon Franklin, went on trial for killing the 42-year-old grandfather, one of four generations living in the house on Woodlawn Avenue.

“They didn’t want any money. They didn’t take anything,” prosecutor Ilan Zur told a jury. “The motive to this was clearly execution and nothing else.”

Police arrested Franklin six months after the Nov. 14, 2019, shooting. The other alleged attacker was never charged.

Franklin went on trial last year, but the case ended in a hung jury in November.

On Thursday, his second trial for first-degree murder began before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Elliot Howsie.

As Franklin sat in the courtroom wearing a fluorescent yellow jail uniform, having refused to put on civilian clothes, Zur laid out his case for jurors.

Zur admitted that the prosecution had no DNA, no fingerprints, no cell phone evidence and no GPS tracking to place Franklin at the scene.

He also told the jury that two of the witnesses inside the house that night will not testify. One can’t be located, and the other refuses to answer questions.

“It’s not an easy thing to come into court and identify a person as a murderer,” Zur said.

But, the deputy district attorney continued, the jury would have everything needed to arrive at a conviction — including video taken inside the home that night that shows Franklin wielding a distinctive pink and black handgun.

“Nothing will be kept from you,” Zur said.

Defense attorney Aaron Sontz said he expects the jury to find reasonable doubt.

“I actually agree with something the commonwealth said in its opening,” Sontz said. “They are missing a lot of evidence in this case.

“A lot of it.”

The jury will not hear from anyone with personal knowledge from the crime scene, Sontz said.

No one will provide a description of what Franklin wore that night, he continued.

Instead, Sontz said, the only identification will come from people who said they recognized Franklin when police publicly circulated a still image from the crime scene — what he called “a few seconds of a surveillance video recorded on a private security camera.”

The defense attorney told the jurors that he expects those witnesses to lie.

“It’s not their opinion that matters — it’s yours,” Sontz said. “Their testimony will be riddled with inconsistencies with each other and themselves.

“The entire case against Brandon Franklin is nothing but speculation and conjecture,” Sontz said.

The trial is expected to continue through much of next week.