After 10 days of testimony from 30 witnesses, a jury is now deliberating whether Christopher Clements is guilty of kidnapping and first-degree murder in the 2012 death of Isabel Celis.
Trial for Clements, who is accused of breaking into the Celis home and abducting Isabel, age 6, began Feb. 14 in Pima County Superior Court. Prosecutors say he became a suspect when he led investigators to the location of her remains in 2017, in return for authorities dropping unrelated charges against him.
Miller projected a photo of a young Hispanic girl onto a wall-sized television screen. A detective previously identified the photo, along with several others found on Clements' devices, as being taken in Tucson. Miller reminded the jury that she'd told them there would be no eyewitnesses, fingerprints or DNA, but said the state presented an overwhelming amount of circumstantial evidence showing that only Clements could be responsible for Isabel's disappearance and death.
"In this courtroom, that part of the nightmare for the Celis family — 'who did this?' — ends," Miller said."We may not know exactly how he got Isabel Celis out of her window that morning, but what we do know over the last two-and-a-half weeks is that the person responsible is Christopher Clements." "I urge each of you to challenge at least one other juror to find one piece of evidence that makes it possible for someone other than Chris Clements to have done this," Kessler said, adding that if they are unable to do so, that means there's a"real possibility" Clements is innocent.
He told the jury there was no evidence presented to show that Sergio Celis didn't go into his daughter's room, pack up her things as if she were going on a trip, and walk her out the front door"to somebody else," returning later to lock the door from the inside and report his daughter missing. Kessler said having knowledge of a crime isn't illegal and that there are"any number of ways he could have known," saying it was up to the state to prove how Clements knew, but they failed to do that.
Defense presents its caseBefore closing arguments, the defense called witnesses Tuesday and Wednesday, including a former Tucson police detective. She allegedly expressed previous doubts Clements was guilty, but the jury did not hear about that. When Kessler asked her if they considered the front door to the home a potential point of entry, she said Tucson police had"considered every access point into and out of that home."
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