ORANGEBURG, S.C. — A man will spend the rest of his life behind bars for killing a Benedict College student after a jury convicted him on the second attempt by prosecutors to get a guilty verdict.
Judge Heath Taylor sentenced Tyler Givens to life in prison late Friday afternoon after his trial this week at the Orangeburg County Courthouse. A jury earlier in the day had handed down a verdict of guilty not only on the murder charge for killing 20-year-old Donovan Smalls but also on assault and weapons counts.
“I sit in this courtroom sometimes the entire week, and I see nothing but young men like Mr. Givens doing the same thing and its sad and its frustrating and it breaks my heart for all the families but there’s a generation of young men that half of them are going to be dead and half of them are going to be in jail and I don’t understand," Taylor said while rendering his decision.
Givens killed Smalls during a party on Summers Avenue in Orangeburg on April 14, 2019. Investigators had said Givens and three friends had gone to a party that night, and during the event, a woman fired her gun, setting off a chain reaction where others pulled out their weapons. One of the shots fired by Givens hit Smalls. He was taken to the hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.
A female student from Claflin University was also hit in the chest by a bullet but recovered.
Smalls' mother, Crystal Matthews, said achieving this result was a long journey.
"I’ve been waiting since April 14, 2019, to find the persons guilty who murdered Donovan, and now we have that and it’s just like wow it’s finally here," Matthews said. "I’m happy that he’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison but I’m still so sad because I don’t have my son. I don’t have Donovan no matter what I don’t have Donovan, so I still have to live for Donovan and be a voice for the persons or mothers who are in the same position I’m in."
The case went to trial earlier this year, but the judge declared a mistrial after she said law enforcement didn't share evidence with the defense before the proceedings began. The evidence that triggered the mistrial involved cell phone records of a man who had been questioned earlier during the trial. The defense had asked the South Carolina Department of Public Safety for those phone records for years, but it wasn't shared until after the man had been cross-examined on the stand.
Prosecutors had said that following that setback, they would retry the case.
Matthews asked the judge for the maximum penalty possible. She said afterward she hoped the life sentence would prevent this from happening to other parents. "The reason why I wanted the maximum sentence was because I don’t get to talk to Donovan ever again I don’t get to touch Donovan, I'll never get to hear his voice I'll only have the videos I’ve received from him or have of him but nothing else well never get to create new memories with him."
Smalls' family said they have a scholarship at Benedict College in his name for students hoping to follow in his footsteps in engineering studies.