A man found guilty by a federal jury in the 2019 kidnapping death of Jassy Correia is appealing his conviction, according to published reports.
Louis Coleman was sentenced to life in prison following his 2022 conviction in Correia’s death. Her body was found stuffed in a suitcase in the back of Coleman’s car in Delaware. Federal prosecutors said he kidnapped Correia outside a Boston nightclub during the early morning hours of Feb. 24, 2019, and killed her.
According to The Boston Herald , the appeal brief argues that while Coleman never contested that he caused Correia’s death, he wasn’t charged with homicide and that “The government’s kidnapping case was not strong; it was largely circumstantial.”
A large portion of the brief also claims a racial bias to Coleman’s conviction, the Boston Herald reported.
“Coleman, a Black man, asked the court to show prospective jurors a video about implicit bias and offered expert testimony describing the impact of negative police encounters on Black men,” according to the brief, which argues that the court erred in denying these motions, the Herald reported.