Second trial begins for man accused of stomping Everett woman to death

EVERETT — After his murder conviction was overturned, a man went on trial Tuesday for the second time in three years for allegedly stomping an Everett woman to death.

The trial in Snohomish County Superior Court comes 4½ years after Shawna Brune, 29, was found killed near a parking lot off the 11600 block of Highway 99.

In 2021, a jury convicted Jamel Alexander, 34, of first-degree murder. A judge sentenced him to nearly 29 years in prison. At the time, Alexander’s defense attorneys argued their client would have been acquitted if jurors had known about evidence that was suppressed in the first trial.

The excluded evidence resulted in the state Court of Appeals overturning Alexander’s conviction.

In their April 2023 ruling, the appellate court held that two pieces of evidence — someone else allegedly admitting to the murder and a diary entry that raised questions about the time of Brune’s death — should have been heard by jurors.

“Over the next couple of weeks, you’re going to learn about the life and violent death of a woman named Shawna Brune,” deputy prosecutor Bob Langbehn said in his opening statement Tuesday. “Shawna was not an office worker in a cubicle, not a teacher. Shawna was a sex worker. She lived a life in the shadows, taking strangers places where people would not see, where there would be no witnesses.”

At 9 a.m. Oct. 12, 2019, a man walking his dog found Brune’s body. She was nude, with shoe print marks across her body.

The night before, around 9 p.m., security footage showed Brune going into the woods with a man wearing a maroon Puma jacket, a knit cap with an Oakland Raiders logo and Vans shoes.

Detectives identified Alexander as the man in the footage. Alexander later reported to sheriff’s detectives he paid Brune for sex, but repeatedly claimed he did not harm her. He reported Brune was alive when he left her, Langbehn said.

On Tuesday, prosecutors presented the footage of Alexander walking with Brune behind the apartment complex before disappearing. The two entered the area around 9:03 p.m., before going behind a van in a parking lot. At 9:35 p.m., Alexander left the complex alone.

“This will be the last footage of Shawna Brune alive,” Langbehn said.

At the scene, Alexander’s DNA was found on the knit cap, along with Brune’s blood, according to court documents. His DNA was also on some of Brune’s clothes and her body. Police noted a shoe’s tread pattern throughout the crime scene. The pattern matched a Vans-type shoe — the kind of shoes Alexander appeared to be wearing in the security footage, Langbehn said.

That night, Alexander walked away on Highway 99. He got on a bus and eventually ended up in a convenience store. While in line, Alexander looked down at his shoes — stained with red splotches. The carpet in the convenience store was taken to a crime lab to be tested for Brune’s blood. None was found, defense attorney Rachel Forde said Tuesday.

In a police interview, Alexander identified the Vans shoes and Puma jacket as his, and he claimed the clothes could be found in his apartment. Authorities were unable to find any of the clothes, according to court documents.

At the scene, police found Brune’s diary in her purse. One entry, dated the night of her murder, appeared to be a handwritten note dated at 10 p.m. — after Alexander was seen leaving the area.

“Dead people can’t write in their diary,” defense attorney Rachel Forde said to the jury. “That’s the first of many pieces of evidence in this case that was ignored.”

The final entry read:

“I went to Rocky’s for the first time. He thinks it was me that took his (expletive) but I can tell Casey doesn’t think so and is trying to get me back.”

Forde said investigators were so “blinded” by the security footage of Alexander and Brune together that they let other important leads go cold.

A week after her body was found, Brune’s boyfriend reported to police that he had run into two people who lived in the same apartment complex as them and sold drugs to Brune, court documents said. The boyfriend told police one of them described beating her to death in great detail, Forde said.

Police never interviewed the woman who purportedly confessed to killing Brune, Forde said.

The initial trial court excluded the testimony as hearsay. Superior Court Judge George Appel based his decision on the fact the woman who allegedly made the statements refused to testify, making her unavailable for cross-examination.

Forde noted that an apartment within the complex was known for drug-related activity and people constantly coming and going. Brune’s body was found on the trail leading toward that apartment, Forde said.

In the first trial, detective Brad Walvatne testified he reviewed 15½ hours of security footage taken from the camera at the apartment complex the night of the murder and the morning after, court documents said.

The detectives testified he saw a motion detection light come on near the trail where Brune’s body was discovered. That night, three men appeared in the surveillance footage. The manager of the apartment complex reported she did not know who the men were, court documents said.

Police made a copy of the video covering the hours from 8 to 10 p.m. He said he tasked another detective with preserving the entire footage. Walvatne testified that he later went to look for the additional footage, but it was lost.

“This case demanded that law enforcement work diligently to find Shawna Brune’s killer, even though she was someone who lived on the street, used drugs, and sold her body to pay for a habit,” Forde said. “If you expect a thorough investigation, you will be disappointed.”

Judge William Steffener is overseeing the second trial. It’s expected to last three weeks.

Jonathan Tall: 425-339-3486; jonathan.tall@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @snocojon.