A 32-year-old Little Rock man accused of killing his father and another man in separate instances in October 2012 was acquitted of murder charges Monday on mental health grounds.
Doctors at the Arkansas State Hospital who examined Opio Anton Hardin have twice pronounced him as unable to stand trial, diagnosing him with schizophrenia.
Because of his illness, they concluded he could not tell right from wrong at the time of the slayings of Torence Nelson, 37, and Charlie Hardin Jr., 70, and could not control his behavior because of his insanity.
Opio Hardin had been charged with two charges of first-degree murder, one for each of the killings.
Prosecutors had hired experts to review the findings "out of an abundance of caution," and deputy prosecutor John Hout told Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen on Monday that prosecutors had accepted the State Hospital's findings after their authorities had reviewed the state doctors' findings.
Monday was the deadline set by the judge for prosecutors to announce whether they would go forward with the charges.
Hardin, arrested about five hours after Nelson's Oct. 4, 2012, slaying, will remain in custody indefinitely. He's spent the past year in the State Hospital.
The finding of acquittal by reason of mental disease requires that he undergo another mental evaluation by state doctors who will assess his condition and establish a treatment plan. He can qualify for release from custody once he has demonstrated to a judge that he can satisfy the conditions of a supervised-release program for five years.
According to his latest mental evaluation, filed with the court in March, Hardin served in the Army and spent time in Iraq. He has a history of treatment for mental disease over the past 14 years, including at the Veterans Affairs facility in North Little Rock.
Little Rock police say Hardin was one of several men visiting a home on West 22nd Street where witnesses saw him briefly speak to Nelson, who was listening to music with headphones. Hardin walked out of the house then returned with a pistol, shot Nelson in the head and walked out again.
Hardin was found at the intersection of Charles Bussey Avenue and Minor Street trying to change a flat tire on his father's white Toyota Tacoma, which he had been driving. Police found a pistol on the bumper of the sport utility vehicle when Hardin was arrested. Inside the vehicle, police found a second pistol, along with Hardin's father's cellphone, driver's license and a credit card.
During the search that night for Hardin, after talking to another of the senior Hardin's sons who expressed concern that his brother might have hurt their father, police checked on the older man but didn't find anyone at the elder Hardin's home on East 15th Street.
The front door of the home was unlocked and newspapers had accumulated on the front porch. Investigators entered the house, where they discovered a "significant" amount of blood spatter but not the senior Hardin, police said.
Charlie Hardin's body, with a gunshot wound to the head, was discovered about a month later in the 1500 block of Woodyard Road. It took about eight days to determine his identity by using DNA.
Shown a copy of his father's autopsy photograph by police at his request, Opio Hardin began laughing but declined to give a statement to police, court records show.
Metro on 07/08/2014