Verdict: Jury finds 'ballhard' member guilty of murder

FORT WAYNE, Ind. ---Jalan Carpenter was found guilty of murder in Allen Superior Court Thursday after a three day trial.

The jury believed that Carpenter, now 22, waited for John Peterson, 19, a signed basketball player for Manchester University, in the area of Vance Avenue and Reed Road on March 26, 2021 and ambushed Peterson at 10:28 p.m. that night.

The prosecution showed a street video of Peterson stopped at the red light at that intersection when a black Chevy Tahoe pulled up on the driver’s side.

Jalan Carpenter at the time of his arrest in November, 2024

The passenger in the Tahoe got out, firing into Peterson’s red Ford Fusion 21 times, the flash of the muzzle lighting up the darkness.

At least six bullets killed Peterson, but his passenger, J.W.,  wasn’t injured. J.W. said he dove for cover and drove the vehicle to a home on Willard Drive with his hand on the accelerator.

Willard Drive is important because a repast party was taking place that night at a home on that street where Carpenter was told to leave. Words were exchanged and he and Peterson came close to a physical altercation, witnesses told police, but were pulled apart..

After Carpenter left in a silver Impala, he apparently got a ride in the Tahoe that started tailing Peterson's red Ford Fusion. It pulled into a Shell gas station on West State Boulevard where Peterson met with someone briefly, according to court testimony.

Article from The Probable Cause on first day of the trial:https://www.theprobablecause.com/post/murder-trial-witnesses-on-the-stand-couldn-t-remember-key-points?referral=business-feed

The black Chevy Tahoe then waited at Devon and Willard with its headlights off.  Prosecutors said it was a planned operation, but Robert Scremin, Carpenter’s attorney said Carpenter wouldn’t have had the time to orchestrate all events leading up to the homicide.

On surveillance video, however, the Tahoe occupants wait for more than a half hour in the dark. Then a small SUV drives up and a male passes a gun wrapped in a blanket or a towel to the Tahoe.

Prosecutors said it was Carpenter in the Tahoe because the distinctive hoodie he was wearing was the same hoodie in photos found on social media.

Social media played a big part in the trial. Chief Counsel Tesa Helge showed photos of Carpenter with guns, wads of money and making a hand gesture, the kind of photos that would give a young black man a bad name.

And that’s what Scremin objected to. The photos themselves had nothing to do with the murder of Peterson, but it furthered the prosecution’s suggestion that he and his friends in “ballhard,” were like a gang, he said.

The photos as evidence were “irrelevant,” Scremin said. "They're stupid, in my opinion."

The suggestion of criminal-like behavior was furthered by the testimony of a man who came forward a year ago to say Carpenter admitted to the homicide while they were shooting dice at OldHands, a hangout on Breckenridge Street in downtown Fort Wayne.

The confidential informant, whose name will not be revealed in this article, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for aggravated battery resulting in serious bodily injury, but the 19-year-old inmate is now scheduled for a sentence modification on Friday, possibly for probation, according to online court documents.

Helge said the informant was so nervous about testifying even if the offer was much better than spending years in Westville, where online court documents indicate he is incarcerated. Westville is a notorious Indiana prison where there’ve been reports to The Probable Cause that inmates eat rats and snow blows in to windows during the winter.

“He’d rather go back to prison for seven years than go on the stand and admit what he said,” Helge told the jury in closing arguments.

What informants fear is street justice, deadlier than a prison sentence although homicides occur in Hoosier prisons.

In court, Helge taught a lesson on what it means to talk about “the streets.” The street is the grapevine where people talk; a snitch is someone who betrays the code of silence that protects criminals.

When Helge spoke of the amnesia that four witnesses seemed to have on the stand Tuesday, she was talking about the fear of street justice.

But Latia Stephens, who attended Carpenter’s trial with many of his friends, associates and family, filling up one half of the courtroom gallery, said despite the number of young men in court supporting Carpenter, there was no intimidation and to suggest it was a form of prejudice against black men. The four who took the stand were also friends.

 “Ballhard,” the name of their association or group, refers to playing basketball, Stephens said.

This case lay in a dusty file until the informant came forward and homicide detective Ben MacDonald started looking at it again.

Early on, Carpenter was a suspect, Helge said,  but the case went dormant until new evidence came in.

Three months after the homicide, detectives obtained a search warrant for Carpenter's home and seized two phones and ammunition for a .300 blackout rifle, an unusual choice in street homicides like this, detectives said. Shell casings at the crime scene pointed to that kind of rifle.

Interviews were conducted with the four witnesses at a party and they reported the fight between Carpenter and the victim. Carpenter had been told he wasn’t wanted at the party.

This year, with the two cell phones in hand, MacDonald, who is a forensic cell phone analyst, started combing through thousands of images on Carpenter’s phone. He found a couple of photos of Carpenter wearing a hoodie with bat images that were also identifiable from the black Tahoe.

Cell phone mapping showed there were phone calls around the time of the homicide but not during the homicide and then the phone was tracked heading south. Carpenter, who attended New Haven High School, lived on the city's south side.

In a recorded police interview a year ago with homicide detective Brian Martin, Carpenter insisted that he returned home that night because he had a curfew - he was 18 at the time. But he told Martin, his mother came in to tell him that he’d been accused of killing someone. He said he knew nothing about it, but said he did know John.

Was it disrespect that led to this terrible outcome? Helge seemed to think so.

Perhaps what really convinced the jury were raps Carpenter is credited with creating the night of Peterson’s death.

Lines like “N’——s shoot up houses

We shoot people” seemed to be for real.

Carpenter is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 17. He faces up to 65 years for murder and another 20 for using a gun in the commission of a crime.