On the morning of October 22, 1994, shots were fired at an illegal gambling club in a house on the west side of Dayton, Ohio. Arthur Farmer, who was working as the doorman at the club, was shot in the foot.
The club, known as a “boot joint,” had closed at 6:45 a.m. Officer Jonathan Ross of the Dayton Police Department said he heard the shots at around 7:30 a.m. and was the first officer to arrive at the crime scene.
During the investigation, the police learned that 33-year-old Reubin Beavers had arrived at the club at around 3 a.m. and attracted attention because of his boisterous behavior. In addition, Agnes Maston, the ex-wife of the club’s owner, said that Beavers called her on the day of the shooting, acknowledged firing the shots, and offered to pay for any damage.
Police arrested Beavers on October 23, 1994, and charged him with felonious assault and two counts of improper discharge of a weapon.
Beavers’s trial in the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas began in May 1995.
Farmer testified that there had been a knock on the club’s door just after it closed. He said he looked out a window and saw Beavers walking away from the club, toward a small red car. Farmer said Beavers reached into the car, pulled out an assault rifle, and began shooting. Farmer said Beavers fired more than 20 rounds into the club and the building next door.
Farmer testified that he recognized Beavers. He said: “Well, from down there gambling just a couple hours earlier, because he was loud, and I recognized him. He had on the same clothes.”
Farmer had credibility issues. He was a convicted felon, and he testified that he had used heroin the night before the shooting.
Maston testified that she spoke twice with Beavers after the shooting, once on the phone and once in person. She said that Beavers acknowledged responsibility both times. “As I came in the door, well, he grabbed and hugged me; and he said that he was sorry, and he was crying, because he was really upset, he was crying, and he said that at that point he did not know that he had shot anyone”
Ross, the first officer on the scene, testified that Farmer had told him that he recognized the shooter as someone who had been in the club earlier that morning. He said that Farmer told him he had heard pounding on the club’s door, looked out the window, and saw a Black man whom he had seen earlier walk to a red Toyota Tercel, pull out a rifle, and begin firing at the house. Ross’s report did not contain information about any eyewitness identification, and Ross testified that that was simply an oversight on his part. The police report had also mentioned a “Black male in a van” but offered no additional description.
Braden Carlisle testified as a defense witness that he was about 100 to 150 feet away from a man on the sidewalk he saw shooting at the club. He said that man was not Beavers. He testified that he knew Beavers because Beavers was friends with Carlisle’s brother. He also testified that he was in the Montgomery County Jail with Beavers after the shooting.
Virgil Meadows testified that he was driving past the club at around 7:30 a.m. when he saw Beavers at the intersection of Woodward and Kammer avenues driving away from the club. Meadows said he heard gunshots and saw a Black man with a gun in front of the house. He could not describe the man. Meadows testified that he did not contact the police to tell them what he saw, even after Beavers was arrested.
Terri Watkins, a friend of Beavers and the mother of his son, testified. Watkins said that she and Rosalyn Wilcox, Beaver’s niece, picked up a man known as “Mike D” and his girlfriend, and they drove in Beavers’s Impala to meet Beavers at the club. She said that after Beavers knocked on the door of the club, he got into the driver’s seat of his car with her and Wilcox, and they drove away. Watkins testified that someone started shooting as they drove off, but it wasn’t Beavers. Watkins also testified that she did not come forward after learning of Beavers’s arrest.
Beavers testified that it was Mike D who had fired shots at the house. He said that in the hours before the shooting, he had swapped cars with Mike D and driven Mike’s red Toyota to the gambling club. Beavers said he had won some money playing dice and was worried about being robbed by a man named Tony Milliner. Beavers said Milliner did try to rob him when he left the club. After the robbery attempt, Beavers said, he went to a convenience store and called Mike D because he remembered Mike D telling him that he had been robbed by a man named Tony.
Beavers said Mike D was around 6’ tall and 165 to 170 pounds. He said Mike D had darker skin, but “I guess you could say we could pass for maybe brothers or some relation or something, but he’s darker than me.”
Beavers said Mike D arrived in Beavers’s car with Watkins and the others, and then Mike D and his girlfriend got into the Toyota. Beavers said he went back to the boot joint and knocked on the door to get Milliner to come out of the house. After there was no answer, Beavers said, he returned to his car, an Impala, and drove off. He said he heard gunshots and looked in his rearview mirror to see Mike D firing shots at the house.
Beavers testified that although he did call Agnes Maston and take responsibility for the shooting, he never said he was the shooter. He also said that he never mentioned Mike D’s involvement in the shooting.
On May 16, 1995, the jury convicted Beavers of felonious assault and two counts of discharging a firearm at or into a habitation . Beavers was sentenced to 18 to 28 years in prison .
Beavers appealed, arguing that there had been insufficient evidence to sustain his conviction. The Ohio Court of Appeals, Second District, affirmed the conviction on January 28, 2000.
On September 23, 1996, while that appeal was underway, Beavers filed a motion for post-conviction relief, asserting that his attorney, Mark Stone, had been ineffective for failing to present testimony from three potential witnesses, including Raney Mease, who said that after he and Beavers met in prison, Mease realized he had witnessed the shooting that Beavers had been convicted of.
In an affidavit, Mease said he had been crossing the street in front of the boot joint when he saw a Black man in front of a reddish-maroon vehicle holding a rifle. The man said to him, “You better get your ass up out of here.”
Mease said he ran to his van and heard gunshots as he started his vehicle and drove off. He wrote: “In regards to the man I seen shooting, I cannot say why this man was shooting. I can only say the man shooting the rifle was not Reubin Beavers. I state this with firm and direct knowledge of what I observed.”
Without holding an evidentiary hearing, a judge in the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas denied Beavers’s petition. On December 31, 1997, the Court of Appeals of Ohio, Second District, ordered the lower court to hold a hearing.
After a hearing, the trial court again denied Beavers’s petition. The appellate court affirmed that ruling on April 21, 2000. Although Ross’s report mentioned a man in a van telling police about the shooting, the court said it was not reasonable to expect Beavers’s attorney to have discovered Mease from this bare-bones description.
Although the court rejected Beavers’s claim of ineffective assistance by his attorney, the ruling said that Beavers could file a new motion for post-conviction relief, using Mease’s affidavit as newly discovered evidence.
Beavers followed the court’s suggestion and filed a motion for a new trial on July 13, 2000.
For the next 12 years, the case moved back and forth between the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas and the Court of Appeals of Ohio. A series of judges in the lower court rejected Beavers’s motions, ruling that Mease, a convicted felon, was not a credible witness and that his testimony had a low probability of leading to a different outcome if a new trial was granted.
The appellate judges in turn kept remanding these decisions for further review, noting in 2009 that, “Because this case involved a shooting on the premises of, and involving patrons of, an illegal after hours drinking and gambling establishment, or ‘boot joint,’ it is not surprising that none of the witnesses who were present at the scene had the credibility of, say, the Archbishop of Canterbury.”
Beavers was released from prison on May 13, 2008.
At an evidentiary hearing on January 5, 2011, Beavers and Mease both testified about how they had met in prison. Mease testified that he was the man in the van who had made the report to the police. He testified that in October 1994, he was 22 years old, and he was “pretty certain” he had a “fade” haircut.” (Ross had testified at a 2007 hearing that the man in the van had bushy hair and would later testify that the man was in his 40s or 50s.)
Gary Ware, an investigator for the Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office, testified about an interview he conducted in 2001 with Dewight White, who had shared a cell with Beavers at the prison in Chillicothe. According to Ware’s affidavit of the interview, White said Beavers admitted on more than 20 occasions to shooting a gun into the club after an altercation with another man at the gaming tables and that he had paid Mease to create an alibi for him. (White did not testify; Ware testified that he thought White had been deported.) Ware also had interviewed Robert Matson, the club’s owner, in 2001, and he testified that Matson told him Mease was not at the club on the night of the shooting. The investigator also testified that Farmer had also said that Mease was not at the club.
After that hearing, the trial court again denied Beavers’s motion for a new trial. The judge said Mease was not a credible witness, and his testimony was cumulative and unlikely to affect the outcome of the case.
Beavers appealed. On August 17, 2012, the Court of Appeals of Ohio, Second District, granted Beavers a new trial. It said that Mease was no more or less credible a witness than Farmer. The state had argued that Mease’s testimony would be cumulative to Carlisle’s trial testimony. But the appellate court disagreed, noting that Mease had testified at the hearing that he was around 20 feet from the shooter and, unlike Carlisle, was close enough to see the shooter’s face.
“As in every criminal case, a jury would not have to find that Beavers was not the shooter; it would merely have to find the existence of reasonable doubt that Beavers was the shooter.”
The state dismissed the case on September 16, 2013.
On May 14, 2015, Beavers filed a lawsuit to be declared a wrongfully imprisoned individual, the first step to receiving state compensation. On June 18, 2018, a trial judge ruled that he had been a “wrongfully imprisoned individual.” The state appealed, and the Court of Appeals reversed on technical grounds. Beavers refiled his case on September 16, 2021. After a series of court rulings, a trial on his compensation claim was set for 2026.
– Jose Ambriz, Brigitte Arechiga, Ruth Castillo, Kylie Daraphonhdeth, and Caitlyn Douglas, supervised by Mingxi Xie
Posting Date: 06-25-2026
