LITTLE ROCK — Prosecutors have the defendant’s car and they have his clothes, including a bandanna spattered with the slain man’s blood, but they can’t prove he is a killer, a defense attorney told a Pulaski County jury Tuesday in opening statements in the capital murder trial of Henry Alexander Harmon.
No physical evidence ties the 42-year-old Little Rock man — who is also charged with aggravated assault, fleeing and two counts of aggravated robbery — to the January slaying of 33-year-old John Edward Williams Jr. at the Heritage House Inn on South University Avenue in southwest Little Rock, attorney Robby Golden told the nine women and three men hearing evidence before Circuit Judge Leon Johnson.
Prosecutors are seeking a life sentence. Proceedings resume at 9:30 a.m. today.
“The issue is — was Henry Harmon in the car and did he do this [killing]?” Golden said.
The only eyewitness to Williams’ slaying — his fiancee Christina Anna Dyer — cannot identify Harmon as the killer, Golden said.
He urged jurors to be skeptical of two other prosecution witnesses: Nakita Smith, who said she was with Harmon at the motel, and Rahim Basir, who said Harmon told him about hiding his car, clothes and the pistol used in the killing.
Smith’s use of crack cocaine the night of the killing makes her memory of events unreliable, Golden said. Basir has an “ax to grind” with Harmon because the men have been in fights before, he added.
Deputy prosecutor Ken Burleson told jurors that the motive for Williams’ killing is one of humanity’s oldest: cash.
“Some people get up and go to work for money ... and some people kill for money,” Burleson said. “John Williams and Christina Dyer had the money. Henry Harmon wanted the money. And he killed for the money.”
The killer led police on a pursuit, and he was able to successfully elude officers the night of the slaying, Burleson said.
But the killer left behind his car, a 1989 Lincoln Continental, and his coat — with the .380-caliber pistol used to kill Williams in a pocket — the bloodspattered neckerchief and a sweat shirt, Burleson said.
Receipts in the coat and papers found in the car belong to Harmon, he told jurors.
Dyer, 31, testified that she and Williams had lived in the motel about a month. They had bought a car a few hours before the killing after she had received a $9,000 disability payment.
The couple had just turned out the lights to go to sleep, she told jurors, when someone knocked at their door.
Williams was at the door when it was kicked in by a man who opened fire while screaming for money, she testified.
Williams fell back, shot in the chest, Dyer said, and the gunman pistol-whipped her. Dyer told the attacker that they had no cash, as the disability payment was made on a charge card.
She ran naked from the room, briefly holding the door closed while calling for help, she told jurors.
Smith told jurors that Harmon had picked her up off the street to smoke crack with him. She said they consumed $20 worth but didn’t have money for more, saying she directed him to go to the Heritage House because she had been invited by friends to a party where she said they might be able to get free crack.
She heard Harmon go into a motel room followed by three shots and a woman screaming for help, she testified. Two more shots followed, and Harmon came running back to the vehicle, holding a pistol with a bandanna covering his mouth.
“I heard him kick the door and I heard a woman hollering, ‘Don’t hurt my husband, don’t hurt my husband ... I don’t got no money,’” Smith told jurors. “I asked him what happened, and he said, ‘B, shut up before you get the same thing he got.’”
It seems unlikely that Harmon will testify, given that he is a parolee who has been sent to prison three times since 1997 and has a criminal record dating back to 1992 with at least a dozen convictions, including first-degree battery, second-degree battery, drug possession, theft and possession of stolen property.
His most recent sentence was a six-year term he received in August 2006 for possession of drugs and stolen cars. He still faces unrelated robbery and aggravated robbery charges.
Arkansas, Pages 14 on 11/28/2012