LITTLE ROCK — A Pulaski County Circuit judge said Tuesday that he’d decide within a week whether a 19-year-old Sherwood man accused of setting a house fire that killed his grandmother should stand trial as an adult or be charged in the juvenilejustice system.
Anthony Michael Goins was 17 when 72-year-old Marietta Mae Goins died in a June 2008 blaze at their Sherwood home, 18 when he was arrested on manslaughter and arson charges in April 2009, and 19 at Tuesday’s hearing before Judge Herb Wright. Defense attorney Brandy Turner requested the case be transferred to juvenile court, telling the judge her client has no criminal history.
Goins had lived with Marietta Goins since age 10 because of abuse by his mother, Turner said, and has undergone repeated mental health treatment since he was 5. Goins was institutionalized after his grandmother’s death, she said, only to be released on his 18th birthday in January 2009. She said authorities haven’t tried to rehabilitate him.
“The state has never given him a chance,” Turner said.
The “protection of society” requires that Goins be tried in adult court, where he faces a maximum of 40 years in prison, deputy prosecutor Jeanna Sherrill said. He has a record of anti-social behavior, starting fires at home and threatening his grandmother, she told the judge. The state’s extended-jurisdiction laws, which allow courts to impose an adult sentence on juvenile offenders who aren’t rehabilitated, don’t cover manslaughter, Sherrill said, so Goins would only fall under juvenile authority until he turns 21, about 15 months.
Proof that Goins should be treated as an adult includes his being able to hold a job at Wal-Mart, where he was working at the time of his arrest, and maintaining a checking account, the prosecutor said. Goins, whose attorney considered but dropped an insanity defense, also tried to fool state doctors about his intelligence level, she said. He was diagnosed as mentally ill, but competent for trial, court records show.
Neither firefighters nor insurance adjusters know what caused the blaze, Sherwood officer Joshua Adams testified on Tuesday, but they do know the fire started in the middle of the living room at the Patricia Lynn Lane home and that a lighter was found on Goins’ bed.
“There was no means for a fire to start there,” Adams, who led the investigation, told the judge. Marietta Goins died of burns and smoke inhalation, he said.
Anthony Goins suffered burns to his face and hands, telling investigators he was injured trying to rescue the woman. He has claimed he’s being framed for the fire and his grandmother’s death because investigators are frustrated that they can’t figure out how the blaze started.
Goins’ records from treatment at Pinnacle Point Hospital and The BridgeWay hospital show complaints from his family that he once set a blanket on fire on a couch, unscrewed a natural gas main, liked to play with fire, burned holes in a car seat with a lighter, set a pair of socks on fire in his room and stuffed rags in a water heater to try to burn down the house, Adams testified.
He was institutionalized five times over those complaints between December 2001 and January 2007, the police officer told the judge.Among those complaints were accusations of aggression against classmates, destroying property at the home, suicidal and selfdestructive thoughts and threats against family, particularly his grandmother whom he’d wished would die, Adams said. He was deemed a homicidal risk in a January 2007 assessment, which led to his family hiding all flammable materials in the home, the officer testified.
When his grandmother died, no one else would take custody of him because they were afraid of him, Adams told the judge. Court records show that Goins received $49,000 from the dissolution of his grandmother’s estate a week before his arrest, but he reported he was indigent when he was arraigned three months later in circuit court.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 09/23/2010