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WARREN – Melissa Putnam broke down in tears Monday, crying to the point that jurors could barely understand her testimony. She gave a vivid account of how David Martin pulled a gun on her and her friend Jeremy Cole, shooting both of them, wounding her and killing Cole, almost two years ago.
Putnam, 30, was the first witness in Martin’s capital murder trial in which a panel of eight women and four men, along with four alternates, were seated in the courtroom of Trumbull County Common Pleas Judge Andrew Logan earlier Monday.
Martin faces execution if convicted on aggravated murder charges and specific aggravated circumstances. If so, the same jury would hear the mitigation, or penalty, phase where the panel recommends death, life without any parole, or parole after 20 years or more.
”He told me, ‘I’m sorry, Missy,’ and then he shot me. He was directly over top of me,” Putnam said, reaching for a tissue on the witness stand.
Before crying uncontrollably when she saw crime scene photos of Cole tied up on the bed in one of the bedrooms of her Oak Circle S.W. home, Putnam described how Cole let Martin inside the home and all three smoked marijuana, which she previously bought from Martin and sold.
”He came out of the kitchen with a gun in his hand and told Jeremy he was a child molester. I told him, ‘Bro, you have the wrong dude,”’ she said.
Putnam described Cole as her best friend for two or three years before the murder, but they weren’t romantically involved.
She said Martin, 29, wound up stealing her marijuana, her purse containing maybe $100 and her cell phone.
She was ordered at gunpoint to tie up Cole and then tie up herself, she testified.
”He put a towel or a shirt over my head. I started to pray out loud,” Putnam said, describing how she flinched and put her partially bound hand up to protect herself.
Cole, 21, was shot once between the eyes, execution style. Putnam suffered a bullet wound where the bullet went through her right hand and lodged in her head above the neck.
She underwent a four-hour operation and a four-day hospital stay before picking Martin out of the third photo lineup she was shown by a Warren detective.
Putnam also told assistant county prosecutor Gabe Wildman how at an earlier proceeding in the case, Martin turned her way and told her: ”B–, I should have shot you in your face.”
Assistant county prosecutor Chris Becker told jurors how when Martin was arrested within a month after the murder, Martin told U.S. marshals who found him with the .40 caliber handgun in Tallmadge, ”I can accept the needle. You got the gun. I have no reason to lie.”
Prosecutors are already trying to bring out aggravated circumstances, knowing that the defense has already conceded guilt and is planning on putting their main effort into the mitigation phase when they will bring out other facts to gain sympathy for Martin, including that his mother was murdered when he was young.
Marshals who arrested Martin, a detective who examined the crime scene on Sept. 27, 2012, and a woman who lived with Martin on Belmont Avenue in Warren are expected to testify this afternoon.