Prosecutors relied on witnesses, police observations and a recovered piece of asphalt as jurors considered how Susan Watkins was killed.
FORT WORTH, Texas — When Steven Black’s murder trial reached closing arguments, the case centered on a question more specific than whether Susan Watkins had suffered a fatal assault: whether the evidence proved Black acted with the intent required for murder. A Tarrant County jury decided that it did, convicting Black and imposing a life sentence with parole eligibility after 30 years.
The dispute over intent gave the trial a different focus from the investigation that began July 9, 2025. Police had responded to the 900 block of South Jennings Avenue after witnesses reported an attack in progress. Officers found Watkins, 50, critically injured near a dumpster and detained Black after encountering him nearby. By trial, prosecutors had eyewitness accounts, police observations and a piece of asphalt associated with the assault. Defense attorneys Tim Brown and Kevin Novak did not need to provide jurors with an alternative explanation for every piece of evidence. Their reported argument instead questioned whether the state had met its burden on Black’s mental state, an element prosecutors had to establish beyond a reasonable doubt.
Prosecutors Tim Rodgers and Grayson Ezzell argued that the sustained nature of the attack demonstrated the necessary intent. Courtroom reporting described the state presenting the piece of asphalt to jurors and recounting repeated blows and stomping. The most graphic language used in court is not necessary to understand the prosecution’s point: the state maintained that the number, force and continuation of the blows showed deliberate conduct, not an accidental injury or a minor assault with an unforeseen result. The jury was therefore asked to infer intent from conduct and circumstances, a common feature of criminal trials in which there is no reliable direct statement establishing what was in a defendant’s mind.
The prosecution’s argument rested on a record that had started taking shape while the assault was still being reported. An arrest affidavit cited by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram said a witness called police at about 8:45 a.m. after seeing a man stomping on a woman’s head. Two people reported seeing a man kicking Watkins behind the dumpster. Another witness said the man had a rock in his hand and dropped it when officers arrived. Those witnesses had different views of the episode, but their accounts gave responding police information about the attacker and his location. The affidavit said an officer soon spotted a man matching the description a short distance away.
Police identified that man as Black. According to the affidavit, he ran when the officer tried to contact him, but the officer caught and detained him. The officer then saw what appeared to be blood on the lower part of Black’s legs. Black declined to explain where it came from, the affidavit said. Investigators recovered evidence from the scene while Watkins was taken to a hospital. She remained alive for five days before dying from her injuries. The transition from assault case to homicide meant prosecutors would eventually have to connect the actions witnesses described not just to serious injuries but to Watkins’ death and to the statutory requirements of the murder charge.
Black did not take the witness stand at trial, according to courtroom reporting. His decision not to testify could not relieve the prosecution of its burden or be treated as proof of guilt. The state still had to establish the offense through its evidence. The defense’s challenge to intent gave jurors a narrower alternative to outright acceptance of the prosecution’s theory. Trial reporting indicated the defense raised the possibility that Black did not intend to cause serious bodily injury or death. Prosecutors countered by emphasizing the repeated nature of the violence and the use of a hard object against Watkins. The guilty verdict showed jurors found the state’s interpretation of the evidence persuasive beyond a reasonable doubt.
After the conviction, the punishment imposed was life in prison. Reports on the sentence say Black may become eligible for parole after serving 30 years. That eligibility date does not guarantee eventual release. The sentence nevertheless gave the case a defined legal outcome more than a year after Watkins’ death. It also marked a sharp change in how Black could accurately be described. When police arrested him in 2025, he was a suspect accused of murder and entitled to the presumption of innocence. After the jury returned its verdict, he was a convicted murderer, subject to the life sentence imposed in state court.
What the trial did not establish publicly was a motive. The arrest affidavit did not identify a relationship between Watkins and Black, and relatives said they believed the two may not have known each other before the attack. Family members hoped nearby surveillance footage might provide clues about what preceded the violence. None of the verified reports reviewed for this account establishes that prosecutors later announced why Watkins was targeted. That absence is legally different from the dispute over intent. Motive asks why a person acted; intent concerns the state of mind accompanying the act. Prosecutors could prove murder without supplying jurors with a definitive reason for the encounter.
Watkins’ relatives confronted that distinction outside the courtroom. Her daughter, Briana Watkins, described her mother after the killing as a person whose life included hardship and health problems but who still cared deeply about others. Watkins had been living on the street when she was attacked, according to family accounts. Her mother, Dorothy Grimes, told local media that Watkins stood up for other people and would challenge bullies. The family’s statements complicated any attempt to reduce her identity to homelessness or the circumstances of her death. They described someone whose difficult circumstances were part of her life but were not, in their telling, the measure of her worth.
Briana Watkins also disclosed through a fundraiser that her mother was a registered organ donor. The family planned to honor those wishes and sought assistance with cremation, an urn, a plot and headstone, travel and related expenses. That account emerged while the criminal case was still new and before prosecutors had taken Black to trial. It served a purpose different from the arrest affidavit: instead of documenting probable cause, it documented family memory. The two records together show how a homicide case can create parallel public narratives — one concerned with evidence and criminal liability, the other with restoring a victim’s personal identity after official documents necessarily focus on the mechanics of a crime.
The evidence presented at Black’s trial answered the question the jury was empaneled to decide. Witnesses had described the assault, officers had documented what they encountered nearby, and prosecutors presented the physical evidence they said demonstrated the severity and persistence of Black’s conduct. Jurors concluded those facts were sufficient to prove murder. The resulting life sentence means Black will spend decades in custody before parole can even be considered. Yet the prosecution’s success does not turn every unknown into a known fact. The public record still does not reliably establish a motive or the precise circumstances that brought Watkins and Black into the same place that morning.
That separation between proven facts and unanswered questions is now part of the case’s final public shape. The state proved Black’s criminal responsibility to a jury. Watkins’ relatives obtained a verdict and sentence but not the explanation they had sought since 2025. Unless further verified information emerges through court records or an official account, the reason for the attack remains unknown. The law supplied an answer about guilt and punishment; it did not supply an answer for why Susan Watkins’ life ended on South Jennings Avenue.
Author note: Last updated October 17, 2026.