Tristan Duane Lewis was sentenced to 20 years in prison Thursday for killing his 26-year-old stepbrother in a case where there was no question that the 21-year-old Little Rock man had fatally shot the older man.
The key issue for a Pulaski County jury to decide was whether the March slaying of Freddie Lee Hinton Jr. during a confrontation with Lewis in front of the family home at 17th and Battery streets was murder or self-defense.
During the three-day trial before Circuit Judge Herb Wright, prosecutors argued Lewis had deliberately killed the older man and should be convicted of first-degree murder.
But the seven women and five men on the jury rejected that accusation, instead finding Lewis guilty of second-degree murder after about 4½ hours of deliberation Wednesday, imposing the 20-year sentence Thursday.
The verdict is a finding that Hinton was killed while Lewis was deliberately engaging in dangerous behavior. The charge is a Class A felony that carries a 45-year maximum when committed with a gun. Jurors could have also opted for reckless manslaughter, which carries a 25-year maximum when a firearm is used.
The prosecution and defense agreed on the essential elements of the confrontation between Hinton and Lewis, both telling jurors that Lewis had been arguing with three men -- Robert "Frog" Holmes, Malcolm Farrelly and Dewan Williams -- who had gone to the family home to confront Lewis as part of an ongoing feud about whether he had stolen some guns weeks earlier.
But the sides disagreed on which brother was to blame for escalating an altercation between the two siblings into a homicide.
In the prosecution's version of events, ex-con "Little Fred" had been the peacemaker, trying to keep his younger stepbrother from provoking a street fight that could jeopardize their parents, siblings and young nieces and nephews inside the home.
Released on parole three months earlier, Hinton also didn't want to go back to prison and hoped to keep Lewis out of the penitentiary as well, prosecutors said.
The slightly built Lewis was so self-conscious about his small size and worried that people might think he's a "punk" coward that he had taken to regularly carrying a gun to boost his self-esteem, deputy prosecutor Jeanna Sherrill told the jury.
Hinton and Lewis considered each other siblings, and Hinton counseled the younger man like a brother to get him to back down from the three men, Sherrill told jurors.
But Hinton was killed because his efforts to calm the situation humiliated Lewis in front of the men he'd been feuding with, she said.
"And what happens to Little Fred? Tristan Lewis shoots him dead because Tristan is not a punk," she told jurors.
Sherrill and fellow prosecutor Amanda Fields argued that all Hinton had done was try to protect his family, while his younger brother had deliberately put them all at risk by escalating tensions with the men.
"Tristan Lewis was ready to take a life right there at 17th and Battery. He didn't know whose it was going to be," Sherrill said in closing arguments. "Little Fred was trying to save lives."
Defense attorney Cheryl Barnard said her client had only done what he did to protect himself. In the defense account of the slaying, Hinton, enraged at his brother for provoking the three men to go to the home, angrily confronted Lewis, who had plenty of reasons to fear him.
The men didn't have a brotherly relationship because Hinton's father had married Lewis' mother, Candace Mazique Hinton, about the same time Hinton was sent to prison, said Barnard, who was assisted at trial by attorney Jessica Duncan.
And Hinton was about 80 pounds heavier with a reputation as a fighter, both on the street and in prison, where the older man had just been released on parole for kidnapping and aggravated robbery convictions, she told jurors.
So when Hinton put his hands on Lewis, the younger man feared for his life, she said. And when the enraged older man refused to back down from a warning shot -- a bullet that creased the wallet in Hinton's back pocket -- a panicky Lewis fired two more shots, then fled, not knowing for hours that he'd killed the older man, Barnard said.
"It's not a nice little scuffle ... a tussle. There was some real emotion going on there," the defense attorney said. "Tristan had Freddie Jr. coming at him -- all 6-foot-2, 220 pounds -- grabbing his shirt and shaking him around. There's only one thing he can do, fire a warning shot. But Freddie comes back and now he's swinging."
Barnard and prosecutors clashed over the significance of the cap Hinton was wearing when he was killed. The defense argued that the bloody cap showed powder burns from a gunshot, proof that the man had been shot at close range and evidence that Lewis had been fighting for his life that day.
"This shows self-defense," Barnard said.
Prosecutors said a forensic examination did not find gunpowder on the hat. Shell casings and testimony from witnesses such as Hinton's father, Freddie Sr.; the victim's half sister, Frediesha Hinton; and stepbrother Xavier Mazique showed the siblings were several feet apart when Hinton was shot, prosecutors told the jury.
Metro on 08/22/2014