RAVENNA: Glenn Paul Jefferson Jr. admitted Tuesday that he punched and kicked someone who confronted him on the night that 23-year-old Kent State student Christopher Kernich was fatally beaten in a street fight in 2009.
Jefferson, now 25, said the confrontation happened near the back of his car, a 2005 Honda Civic, and that his adversary was about the same height as he, was somewhat chubby and had red hair.
He didn’t know who it was then, he said, because everything happened within seconds after a night of partying and drinking on the Kent State campus.
But Tuesday, some four years after the incident, Jefferson testified to a Portage County Common Pleas jury that he definitely knows his adversary wasn’t Kernich, who had dark hair.
Much farther away on East Main Street, shortly after 2:20 a.m., Nov. 15, 2009, Jefferson said he saw his friends, Adrian Barker and Ronald Kelly, stomping Kernich’s head after he had fallen from a punch.
That testimony came on the fourth day of Barker’s retrial on charges of felonious assault and murder. Prosecutors say Barker threw the blindsided punch that knocked Kernich off his feet.
Barker, 25, won a new trial early last year when an appeals court overturned his 2010 jury convictions, along with his prison sentence of 15 years to life. According to the ruling, the reason for the reversal was that the trial judge, John Enlow, failed to give jury instructions on lesser included charges of manslaughter and reckless homicide.
Jefferson, who was on the witness stand Tuesday for two hours, had his lawyer, Ronald Spears, seated in the gallery throughout his testimony.
Out of earshot of the jury, Enlow told Jefferson he had the right to have a lawyer present and that he also could decline to answer any questions under his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Jefferson, however, answered all questions from prosecutors and Barker’s defense team.
He told jurors he was never charged with any violent offense on the night of the fight and that he was on probation at that time for a felony theft in Lake County.
Jefferson, now free and working for a paving company, was sentenced to two years in prison for the theft offense, along with two additional felony counts of obstruction of justice for lying to Kent police about the details of the fatal fight.
Jefferson also admitted, in direct questioning by Portage County Assistant Prosecutor Thomas Buchanan, that he appeared several times under oath before a grand jury and lied there, too.
At one point during questioning, Buchanan said that, according to his tally, Jefferson lied to police and grand jurors at least 12 times.
“You lied over and over,” Buchanan said. “I mean, really, Glenn, why would anyone believe you now?”
“Because some people,” Jefferson replied, apparently referring to the jury, “deserve to know the truth about what happened.”
He said he knows now that his adversary on the night of the fight was not Kernich, but one of Kernich’s friends, Bradley Chelko, who was with the victim when they were almost hit by Jefferson’s old, white Civic.
Moments after Jefferson pulled out of a parking lot, with Kelly and Barker as passengers, he nearly hit Kernich and his buddies. Words were exchanged, then the fight broke out.
Jefferson said he never saw who punched Kernich. He reiterated that he did not deliver the blow.
Barker and Kelly were arrested that night, but Kent police let Jefferson go. It was only weeks later that he was charged with obstruction for lying repeatedly to investigators.
Kelly is serving a sentence of 15 years to life for his role in the slaying.
John Q. Lewis, a member of Barker’s three-man defense team, questioned Jefferson at length about the aftermath of the fight.
Several days before Christmas, while he was in jail, Jefferson told police that at one point he kicked Kernich in the midsection after the KSU student was down.
Police did not record that admission, but it arose in April 2010 when Jefferson testified at Barker’s first trial.
Lewis then asked Jefferson if investigators have confronted him at any time about the statements of five eye-witnesses who told police they saw a thin, white male, wearing a white shirt, punch Kernich in the head.
Five times, Jefferson answered, “No, sir.”
Holding the trial binders of those witness statements at the courtroom podium, Lewis loudly snapped each binder closed and tossed it on the defense table next to Barker’s seat.
The defense asserted in opening statements that authorities made quick conclusions about the crime, with Jefferson as their cooperating witness.
Police cruiser videos clearly showed the thinly built Barker also was wearing a white shirt on the night of the fight.
Ed Meyer can be reached at 330-996-3784 or emeyer@thebeaconjournal.com.