On the night of December 7, 2015, a drug deal arranged over social media turned deadly in Lansing, Michigan, leading to the death of 45-year-old Jeffrey Alexander Capers. Capers, a male from Trenton, Michigan, had traveled to Lansing with his girlfriend to sell approximately 60 Xanax pills. The transaction was arranged via Facebook and phone calls with a 17-year-old from Lansing named Jquan Brinkley.
However, Brinkley and an accomplice had no intention of purchasing the drugs and instead planned to rob Capers.
The arranged meeting took a violent turn, and Capers was shot. He was later found unresponsive inside a vehicle that had crashed in the 4300 block of Chadburne Drive. An autopsy determined that Jeffrey Alexander Capers died from a single gunshot wound to his torso. The investigation into his death quickly identified the planned drug deal as the catalyst for the events that transpired.
The subsequent police investigation led to the arrests of two teenagers. Jquan Brinkley was charged with murder, unarmed robbery, and conspiracy to commit unarmed robbery. An 18-year-old, Jamon Anthony Price, was also arrested and faced charges of one count of murder and two counts of unarmed robbery in connection with Capers' death. During a preliminary hearing, a Lansing police detective testified that Brinkley had seen a Facebook post offering the pills for sale and decided to commit a robbery instead of a purchase. Both teenage suspects faced the possibility of life in prison if convicted of the charges brought against them. The case against Brinkley proceeded to Circuit Court, where his defense attorney unsuccessfully attempted to have his statements to the police deemed inadmissible.
