On December 17th, there was a surprise hearing convened in the murder trial of Vinson Hardimon also known as rapper Yung Vito in the Fulton County Superior Court in Atlanta and HHE was on hand to bring all the exclusive details as it related to a possible snafu in the prosecution of his case. The hearing comes exactly one year from the date that Atlanta rapper Slim Dunkin was murdered by accused suspect Vinson Hardimon.
Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski aggressively argued to presiding Judge Schwall that releasing Hardimon on bond pending trial would not be in the public’s best interest as she explained that two of the states “very important witnesses” refused to be served with subpoenas and was evading coming to court to testify. Clearly that fact would be almost difficult for the state to get a conviction from a jury if there is no witness that will say that they witnessed Hardimon as the one who actually pulled the trigger that killed Mario Hamilton.
HHE has learned exclusively that the states star witness account of what actually occurred has changed several times during police questioning days after the crime occurred. These facts will obviously pose a problem for the prosecution if in fact this witness is called to take the stand.
What will obviously be a huge problem for the defense though is the fact that the weapon used to kill Mario Hamilton, a Fabrigue Nationalle 5.7 handgun, was also used in a earlier crime committed by Hardimon where he used it to intimidate his ex-girlfriend that he eventually plead guilty to. While the actual weapon was not recovered in that crime, there was ammunition left at both the murder crime scene and the earlier crime scene matching the same type of weapon.
Prosecutor Dunikoski also argued that there were subtle witness intimidation being made via comments posted to various “hip hop” websites and she also suggested that it could have been made by Hardimon family members but obviously this couldn’t be established since there was no proof to support that argument to the judge.
Defense attorney Hirsch didn’t waste any time arguing the fact that Hardimon doesn’t even know the witnesses that he is being accused of intimidating and also it would be very difficult for him to do that since he has been incarcerated since the crime occurred.
In the end, Judge Schwall aired on the side of caution as he explained that there was a decision made in a different case where a murder suspect was granted bond in his court and ended up committing other crimes and for that reason he decided against granting a bond and scheduled the trial for February 18th 2013.
One thing is for certain, there is no question that Hardimon committed the murder based on court filings but the bigger question remains, will a jury see his act as self defense or a cold blooded murder?
Stayed tuned for all the latest develops in the case of State of Georgia v. Vinson Hardimon exclusively covered by Hip Hop Enquirer’s Dennis Byron
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