A case based mostly on circumstantial evidence in which three men were accused in the robbery, rape, and murder of a young San Francisco mother in 2006, has almost come to a conclusion this week with guilty verdicts for 28-year-old Frank Irwine and 34-year-old Kristian Dailey. A jury convicted them in the murder of 22-year-old Shavon Boone despite there being no conclusive evidence of which one of them may have committed the murder.

A third defendent, 25-year-old Terrance Anderson, is going to trial separately later this month, as the Oakland Tribune reports.

The crime occurred sometime in the early morning hours of November 2, 2006, and video surveillance shows Anderson and Dailey hovering over Boone at an Oakland ATM around 2 a.m., suggesting that they were directly involved in robbing her.

Irwine, meanwhile, had an established sexual relationship with Boone, and Boone made multiple calls to Irwine just before her murder. Also, Irwine's DNA was found in Boone's mouth and vagina, suggesting they had been together that night. The jury found Irwine not guilty of rape, however they find him guilty of forced oral copulation, since other evidence showed that Boone had been refusing to perform oral sex.

Circumstantial evidence connects Anderson to the murder, in that Boone's body was found stuffed in a recycling bin that came from the East Oakland apartment complex where Anderson lived at the time, but it remains unclear where the murder occurred. None of the men ever admitted to the crime, and Dailey appears not to have been at the actual scene of the crime, but Dailey was nevertheless found guilty of first-degree felony murder and guilty of committing a special circumstances murder in the course of a robbery.

As the Tribune notes, "The jury reasoned that Irwine committed a forcible oral copulation before he either helped kill or killed Boone on his own."

So why did it take seven years to get a conviction in the case? Well, as the Mercury-News reported last week during closing arguments, the Oakland PD almost botched this one, having lost the case file after releasing the suspects in 2007 for lack of sufficient evidence. When the case file was rediscovered, officers found new DNA evidence, and the district attorney then began pursuing the cases against all three suspects.

[Tribune]
[Mercury News]