LITTLE ROCK — The capital murder trial of a Little Rock man accused of killing a Salvation Army officer was scheduled for January as the 19-year-old made his first appearance Tuesday in Pulaski County Circuit Court.
Laquan Javaris Fitzpatrick didn’t speak at arraignment before Circuit Judge Barry Sims. Fitzpatrick’s attorneys, Bret Qualls and Lott Rolfe IV, entered innocent pleas on his behalf to charges of capital murder in the Christmas Eve killing of Salvation Army Major Philip Wise in North Little Rock, and aggravated robbery and theft over the Nov. 28. armed robbery of a Radio Shack.
Rolfe was part of the defense team who represented Curtis Vance, the Marianna man now serving a life sentence for raping and murdering TV news anchor Anne Pressly.
Fitzpatrick’s attorneys didn’t give any hint of a strategy Tuesday but asked the judge to bar cameras from the courtroom. The six-minute court appearance attracted about a dozen reporters and cameramen. Court rules prohibit news cameras if any party to the case objects to their presence.
Fitzpatrick is due next in court on Nov. 23.
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Chief deputy prosecutor John Johnson told Sims that the capital murder trial would last a week but didn’t say whether prosecutors would waive the death penalty.
Wise’s widow, Cindy, also a Salvation Army major, attended Tuesday’s hearing. She heard the shots that killed her husband, and, outside the courtroom, Johnson said the charity is transferring her out of Little Rock.
“It’s hard. She has young children who’ve just lost their father,” he said. “It’s a family that’s been torn apart.”
Wise was gunned down outside the Salvation Army community center on West 18th Street in front of his three children. Brandon Leavy, 20, later identified by North Little Rock police as the second suspect, was killed 15 days later as he tried to rob a North Little Rock convenience store. A co-defendant is awaiting trial on aggravated robbery and manslaughter in that case.
Fitzpatrick was arrested about three months after Wise was killed, but authorities haven’t disclosed the evidence against him. Prosecutors say the Radio Shack robbery is unrelated, although the holdup was done by three men.
Sims initially set Fitzpatrick’s trial for mid-November, but pushed that date back by two months at the request of the public defenders who said they needed more time to prepare.
The judge also had to work around the schedules of Qualls and Johnson as the attorneys are set to try Brandon Dewayne Johnson in November on a capital murder charge over the December 2008 robbery-slaying of Joseph Bittengle, a University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences instructor.
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 06/02/2010