A former boxer who bragged about the size of his fist and how much weight he could lift was convicted Wednesday of misdemeanor battery for inflicting face-fracturing injuries on a professional martial artist last year.
The jury’s verdict rejected not just Brandon Wade McPeak’s self-defense claim but also accusations by prosecutors that the 24-year-old Bryant man had meant to maim 31-year-old Cherng Jeou Kung of Benton.
The eight women and four men deliberated about 40 minutes to convict McPeak, a self-employed auto-detailer, of the lowest charge possible instead of the felony charges available. Prosecutors contended that McPeak was guilty of first-degree battery, a Class B felony that carries a 20-year maximum sentence.
The misdemeanor battery conviction means that McPeak will face at most a year in jail when he is sentenced by 6th Judicial Circuit Judge Herb Wright next month.
The prosecution and defense agreed that McPeak hit Kung in the face during a March 2013 encounter at Little Rock’s Electric Cowboy nightclub, and that Kung, a professional Muay Thai trainer and fighter, suffered serious fractures.
But they disagreed on the nature of the encounter, how many times Kung was hit and the severity of his injuries.
Kung testified that he was attacked without warning while talking to some women at the club. He said he was punched in the face by 35-year old Dustin Joe Lester of Benton, an “Incredible Hulk”-sized body builder whom he barely knew.
Dazed by the punch, Kung said he went to get club security when McPeak, whom he vaguely knew, hit him in the face with something. Kung said he fell down from the blow and lost consciousness. His last memories were of being punched and kicked as he lay on the floor.
He said the crushing injuries to his face have forced him to give up his martial arts career, damaged his eyesight, inflicted post-traumatic stress disorder and left him with a stammer and recurring anxiety attacks.
Kung bristled at defense characterizations of him as a common fighter, telling jurors that he wouldn’t jeopardize his health and career by getting into a bar brawl. Kung said he’d just returned to Arkansas after spending nearly a year in Asia as a fighter and trainer and was not looking for trouble, just a beer with an old friend.
“I had just come home. I was not looking for trouble,” he testified. “It’s good to be alive but I kind of wish sometimes he had finished me off because I hate living like this.”
But McPeak told jurors that he had to hit Kung first and hard to protect himself because he knew about Kung’s fighting skills.
Kung “jumps up in my face, aggressively coming toward me so I hit the man in his face, hard,” McPeak said. “I know what he can do to me if he gets the chance. There was nothing else I could have done. I wanted to stop him from hurting me.”
McPeak said he struck when Kung lunged at him as he was coming to the rescue of his friend Lester, whom Kung and Kung’s friend, Jeremy Thompson of Benton, and two other men had pushed up against a wall. Kung was supposedly dating Lester’s ex-girlfriend, McPeak said.
McPeak acknowledged that he told detectives that he hit Kung twice, the second punch being a “tap,” but testified he didn’t land that second blow because he was tackled by club bouncers.
Defense attorney Bill James told jurors that Kung was a faker who was exaggerating the effects of his injuries to bolster his lawsuit, filed last month, against the Electric Cowboy, McPeak and Lester, who was convicted of a misdemeanor in a separate proceeding. He asked the jury to acquit McPeak because the man had to act to protect himself from a “world-class cage fighter.”
“You should be offended by what he did,” James said of Kung in his closing argument. “They’re looking for a big payoff. They’re suing everyone with deep pockets. That was an act. That’s all it was. Everything he told you is a lie. You want to know who the mad dog is? It’s him.”
He called on jurors not to read too much into a recorded interview McPeak gave to police in which he talked about how his fist is bigger than a man’s face, how much weight he could lift with each hand, his devotion to physical fitness and his experiences as a teenage boxer.
Detectives “tricked” his client into making those statements using special interviewing tactics in an effort to make him look dangerous to jurors, James said.
Two punches - one thrown after McPeak believed Kung was unconscious - show the defendant committed felony battery, deputy prosecutor Michael Wright told jurors.
“That man smashed [Kung’s] face in. It really is that second hit that makes the difference,” Wright said in his closing remarks. “He’s telling you that hit is what caused the injury to [Kung’s] jaw.”
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 04/24/2014