LITTLE ROCK — A 27-year-old Little Rock man was sentenced to 35 years in prison Thursday for killing a man who had a sexual relationship with the defendant’s girlfriend.
Markeith Stubblefield will have to serve 24 1/2 years before he can qualify for parole for his convictions for first-degree murder and felon in possession of a firearm. Stubblefield was convicted earlier this month in a bench trial by Circuit Judge Herb Wright.
Stubblefield was convicted of fatally shooting Leedell Rudley, a 43-year-old car dealer and father of 19, in October 2011 in the parking lot of the Stone Crest Apartments at 9700 Base Line Road in Little Rock, where Stubblefield lived with his girlfriend, 26-year-old Geri Denise King.
According to testimony, Rudley was able to drive out of the parking lot but crashed in a ditch on Base Line, where police initially thought he had succumbed to a heart attack.
King testified at trial that she and Rudley had a friendship that sometimes involved him paying her for sex. The night Rudley was killed, he was going to her home to take her grocery shopping.
King and Stubblefield had no money, she testified, and had been calling friends to borrow cash. Rudley was going to loan her $40 to buy food, she said.
Stubblefield did not know Rudley, King said, and only knew that a car-dealer friend of hers was going to come by.
Stubblefield was carrying a gun that night, she said, and he was outside the apartment when she heard shots. Stubblefield returned to the apartment and told her he’d fired shots at a man in a car in the parking lot after the man had given him $40 and they had quarreled. When police went to their door later that night, King said, Stubblefield wouldn’t let her answer.
King — the daughter of police Lt. Glenn King, who is head of the Police Department’s homicide and robbery division — met with police the next day. After that meeting, Geri King said she and Stubblefield avoided police for a day until she left him because she couldn’t persuade him to surrender. Stubblefield was arrested about a week after the killing.
She did not attend Thursday’s sentencing hearing.
During the hearing, Rudley’s sister, Shretta Morris, called her baby brother the “glue” of the family who doted on their aging mother. She said he had a gift for seeing value where others didn’t, whether it be in old cars or people.
Questioned by deputy prosecutor Kelly Ward, she said, “He would see the potential in things I wouldn’t look at twice.”.
Rudley had put seven of his sons to work at the car lot, but his death has hurt the business and his family, Morris said, adding that four of the sons are now out of work. Rudley had been to federal prison twice on drug convictions, and he was working hard to make sure his children were raised right.
“They needed their father as a mentor, as a guide,” she said. “He would always let them know, ‘I don’t want you to be where I’ve been.’”
Morris clashed with Stubblefield’s attorney, Leslie Borgognoni, when the lawyer questioned the effect Rudley’s death had on the business. Borgognoni said Rudley appeared to have been facing new drug charges when he was killed.
“Would that have affected his business?” Borgognoni asked.
“I don’t know,” Morris responded. “We didn’t have that privilege” of finding out.
Rudley’s mother, Loretta Rudley, called her son’s death “devastating.” She said he’d worked hard to correct the mistakes he’d made with his life.
“He made a lost of mistakes, and he paid for those mistakes,” she said. “I’m proud of the man he’s become.”
Stubblefield did not testify at his trial or sentencing.
His mother, Daphne Cornice, appealed to the judge for mercy for her only son.
Stubblefield has drawn disability payments since age 5 for a learning disorder that turned him into a target for bullies in school. She said he’d been enrolled in special counseling programs in Arkansas and Tennessee. His learning problems made him easily frustrated and quick to anger, she told the judge, but she’s always known him to be quiet and to keep to himself.
“You would have to do something to him for him to react,” Cornice told the judge. “He’s easily influenced by other people. He’s easily led astray, and I believe that’s why he’s in the trouble he is today.”
Stubblefield’s only previous felony conviction is from December 2005 for attempted burglary.
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 11/30/2012