On the witness stand Thursday, Keith Kennedy McCleod refused to answer the questions a prosecutor asked him.
"I plead the Fifth," McCleod, who is also known as "Big Baby," said, referring to the Fifth Amendment.
Witnesses called by prosecutors on Thursday continued refusing to testify against Tremaine Jackson, who is charged with murder after a shooting last year on Charleston's West Side.
Jackson, 23, of Charleston, is accused of killing Bryan Rogers, 29, who was of the Ripley area, last December near Littlepage Terrace.
McCleod on Thursday morning was taken to a holding cell, after refusing to testify.
"Get me a bailiff," Kanawha Circuit Judge Charles King said, after McCleod told him he would continue refusing to answer the prosecutor's questions.
Prosecutors told McCleod that he didn't need to invoke his Fifth Amendment right to protect himself against self incrimination. He isn't on trial, the prosecutor said.
But McCleod responded that he didn't like the way he was being questioned. He was taken out of the courtroom by a bailiff.
Later Thursday, Jazmin Mitchell also didn't want to testify. She and Jackson have a child together.
Prosecutors are trying to convince jurors that Jackson shot Rogers over a heroin theft. Jackson allegedly told police after the shooting that Rogers had stolen about $3,000 worth of the drug from him.
Mitchell initially Thursday refused to enter the courtroom.
When she finally took the stand, she told jurors that she didn't remember the information prosecutors said she had provided to police.
Assistant Kanawha Prosecutor Maryclaire Akers played a recording of a police interview with Mitchell, trying to jog her memory.
She still said she didn't remember.
Most of the trial has been this way for prosecutors. Thursday marked the fifth day of Jackson's trial.
Jerry Marbury took the stand Wednesday, and told jurors that he had been pressured into making a statement to police against Jackson.
Marbury said on the stand that police had threatened to charge him with murder unless he told them that Jackson had shot Rogers.
Marbury was arrested Monday after he didn't show up to testify. The court had issued what's called a "writ of body attachment," for Marbury, after he didn't show up to testify Monday. The writ operates as a warrant and allows police to arrest a person on site. After an arrest he or she is held in jail.
Jackson's trial will continue Friday. He is being represented by Deputy Kanawha Public Defender Richard Holicker.
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