Jurors are set to begin deliberations today in the trial of Demarcus Chandler who is charged with capital murder-for-hire in the the 2020 shooting death of his 24-year-old girlfriend.

Prosecutor contended Chandler, who has a lengthy criminal history and is locked up in state prison on parole violations from previous crimes, hired 28-year-old Solomon Minatee III to kill Raven Swain..

Chandler, they say, allegedly orchestrated the murder, because he believed she had “ripped him off” while he was in prison.

Moments after Swain was killed in Birmingham’s Underwood Park, authorities said Chandler posted this to Facebook: “God forgive. Papa don’t.”

Additionally, testimony showed that on the day that Swain was killed, Minatee sent Chandler a message with a screenshot shot of his Cash App. Then, less than an hour after Swain was killed, Minatee sent Chandler a message saying, “Bruh, we need the money. The work is done.”

Chandler’s attorneys from the Jefferson County Public Defender’s Office claimed Swain’s family never liked her dating Chandler and quickly named him to police as the likely person who would want Swain dead with no proof of his involvement.

“Demarcus Chandler did not kill anyone,‘’ said public defender Blair Shores. ”Someone else did.”

The trial began one week ago today, and jurors heard from more than 30 witnesses and saw more than 200 pieces of evidence.

Chandler exercises his right to not take the stand during the trial, and the defense team did not put on any witnesses.

Minatee has not yet gone to trial.

The deadly shooting happened shortly after 7 p.m. on Tuesay, July 28, 2020, in Underwood Park on Birmingham’s Southside.

Swain, who worked at UAB Hospital, was found unresponsive in her Hyundai Sonata, which had rolled into foliage after she was shot.

She was slumped over in the driver’s seat leaning toward the passenger’s seat.

Her car doors were locked, and she had been shot under the left arm, with the bullets penetrating her heart and lung.Swain was pronounced dead on the scene.

Jefferson County Circuit Judge Michael Street presided over the trial.

Deputy District Attorneys Charissa Henrichs, Isabella Colombo and Neal Zarzour are prosecuting.

Chandler is represented by the Jefferson County Public Defender’s Office. His defense is led by Shores.

Birmingham police Sgt. John Osborne was the lead detective.

Detectives recovered Swain’s cell phone from her vehicle after her death.

The Alabama Department of Corrections, at the request of police, searched Chandler’s cell and recovered a contraband cell phone there as well.

After obtaining search warrants for the phones and examining them, police said, they found multiple phone calls in the minutes before and after Swain’s death to one number that they later determined to be a cell phone used by Minatee.

Technology also placed that phone to have been in the area of Underwood Park at the time of Swain’s killing.

Testimony showed that Chandler texted Minatee at 6:46 p.m. saying, “I’m on the phone with Raven.”

At 6:57 p.m., Chandler texted Minatee, “I’ll call you when she pulls up.”

Then, at 7:02 p.m., Chandler texted Minatee, “She out there.”

Chandler is also facing a conspiracy to commit murder charge after the home of an Alabama Department of Corrections’ lieutenant was shot up last August. The lieutenant, at the direction of Birmingham homicide investigators, was the one who found the contraband phone in Chandler’s prison cell that prosecutors say was used to orchestrate Swain’s murder.

Testimony throughout the week showed Chandler believed that Swain had taken $8,000 from him, and “thrown his dope out of a window.” The two had a tumultuous, “toxic” relationship, prosesuctors said, that clearly met the criteria for the cycle of domestic violence.

“If somebody crosses this defendant, in his mind they must pay a price,” Zarzour said Monday in closing arguments.

“Raven Swain paid the ultimate price,” Zarzour said. “All because God forgive but Papa don’t.”

Zarzour explained to jurors that in a capital murder-for-hire case, the person who ordered the murder is as equally responsible as the person who pulled the trigger.

“You can’t just said, ‘I can’t be guilty because I didn’t pull the trigger. It doesn’t work that way,” Zarzour said.

“The defendant doesn’t get to do everything he did to arrange Raven’s murder and then hide behind the fact that he wasn’t there,” he said.

Testimony and evidence, much through text messages between Chandler and Swain and Chandler and Minatee showed that Chandler sent Swain to Underwood Park that night under the guise that she was doing a drug deal at his direction.

“Raven had no idea she was being directed to her death,” Zarzour said. “He walked her right into it.”

Chandler’s defense attorney claims that Minatee alone is responsible for Swain’s death, and say she was killed while she was doing a drug deal with Minatee.

Zarzour told jurors they would have to have their heads in the sand to believe that.

“Solomon Minatee had not motive to kill Raven Swain,” Zarzour said. “He didn’t know her. She didn’t know him.”

“Only one man had the motive to murder Raven Swain,” he said.

Shores, in his closing arguments said prosecutors had not met the state’s burden to prove Chandler is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

“The state’s case is a bunch of hot air,” he said, likening it to a hot air balloon. “The case gets bigger but there’s no weight.”

There was no proof, he said, that Chandler hired Minatee to kill Swain, and said prosecutors showed no evidence that Minatee was ever paid to do so.

“They only have assumptions,” Shores said. “There are no bank recores. There is not evidence of an explicit agreement to kill.”

“It’s hard to understand how Demarcus is controlling all of this from 70 miles away,” Shores said.

Prosecutors said proof of payment is not required to convict.

“He didn’t pay him,” prosecutor Henrichs said. “He ghosted him. It’s still capital murder.”

At the time of Swain’s death, Chandler was still awaiting trial on felony charges of domestic violence strangulation/suffocation in which Swain was the victim.

Swain had also in 2019 sought a protection from abuse order against Chandler, citing multiple examples of violence including pistol-whipping and shots fired at her car. That request was ultimately dismissed.

Swain’s mother, Lolita Braxton, testified at trial shots had been fired outside her home as Chandler was leaving and, in another incident, shots had been fired into her home, grazing Swain’s 13-year-old sister.

In some of the text messages shown in court, Swain and Chandler were telling each other they loved each other.

Others were more hostile, with one text from Chandler to Swain saying, “Ho, Ima try calling one more time and if you don’t pick up, oh well.”

Another said, “Bitch, call me now.”

There were several messages from Chandler that indicated his intent to kill her, Henrichs said.

In one message, Henrichs said, Chandler told Swain, “Play with me little girl and go get you some life insurance.”

In a Facebook message to someone else, Henrichs said, Chandler wrote to that person, “This ho going to make me kill her.”

Prosecutors also said Chandler’s calls to Swain’s family members and friends in the moments after she was killed proved his involvement.

To Swain’s mother, Chandler said, “Are you looking for Raven?”

To Swain’s best friend, Henrichs said, Chandler wrote, “Bitch, you need to get up. Your best friend is in Southtown dead.”

“How the hell would he know that?” Henrichs said. “He knew it because he set it up.”

Because of Chandler’s calls to family and friends, she said, the family arrived at the crime scene at almost the same time as police.

“It’s horrific that he called them,” she said. “He had to inflict as much pain and terror as possible.”

“He took great pleasure in making sure,” Henrichs said, “that he had something to do with it.”