Murder of drug informant could become death penalty case
In the weeks leading up to the start of summer last year, Joshua Jalovick was looking to score some coke.
What his drug dealers didn't know is that the Buffalo man was also working as an informant and wearing a wire.
Or did they know?
Just a few months into his work with police, Jalovick's body, riddled with gun shots and left for dead, turned up in a backyard on Freund Street.
The two men accused of pulling the trigger that July day are now charged in a new grand jury indictment.
And they are facing the death penalty.
Prosecutors say Gregory Hay and Alphonso Payne, both of Buffalo, learned of Jalovick's cooperation and plotted to kill him.
They also claim there are three eyewitnesses to the murder, each one of them now charged in the case.
“The victim was a drug dealer and a snitch for the feds who was trying to benefit himself," defense lawyer Cheryl Meyers Buth said Thursday. "My client wasn’t the only person he was informing on. The government knew what the risks were for him on the street.”
As state courts reopen, new Child Victims Act cases filed
Gow School sued
In a statement to The Buffalo News, attorneys Cheryl Meyers Buth and Brian Melber said that their client was exposing what happened to him at the school to protect other children who had no way to fight back against adult sexual predators.
“We’re not talking about just one employee or an isolated incident or ancient history. Our client and other pre-teen/teenage boys were subjected to repeated sexual assaults in the early to mid-90s when there was public awareness about these types of crimes,” they said.
It is the third CVA lawsuit against the Gow School, a college-prep boarding and day school for students with dyslexia and similar language-based learning disabilities. It was an all-boys school until going co-educational in 2013.
Letter to judge details conditions inside prison Chris Collins is scheduled to serve sentence
“Courts are being very good about keeping the prison population low to prevent the transmission of disease,” said Cheryl Meyers Buth, a local attorney who has been providing News 4 analysis on the Collins case. “Also, they don’t want to put any individual prisoner at risk.”
When an inmate reports to FPC Pensacola, the attorneys told the judge, they are immediately tested for the coronavirus. Even if they test negative, they are placed in a quarantine unit for 14 days. Prisoners in the quarantine unit do not have access to email or phones for social calls. If, at the end of the 14-day period, the inmate is asymptomatic and tests negative again for the virus, they are released into the general population.
“Heightened cleaning standards are in place, and inmates in the general population are issued multiple face masks and encouraged to wear them in common areas,” the attorneys wrote. “There is currently no lockdown in place, and inmates have access to the library, recreation, and programming.”
Meyers Buth said it is was not uncommon for surrender dates to be pushed back for federal inmates even before the coronavirus pandemic.
“Certainly since COVID, all bets are off,” she said. “Things have been delayed. There’s been a lot more confusion. It’s just the product of the times right now.