Prosecutors have no hard evidence - only the testimony of “a bunch of accomplices and suspects” - to prove a Little Rock man participated in a 2012 robbery and slaying at a now-closed Mexican restaurant, defense attorneys told a Pulaski County jury on Tuesday.
“You’re going to have to believe all of their witnesses,” attorney Omar Greene II said in opening statements at the capital-murder and aggravated-robbery trial of Kiywuan Niyiopi Perry, 25. “You’ve got witnesses who have a deal [to cooperate] and you’re going to hear they were charged with capital murder and the charges were reduced.”
Perry is one of two brothers, both of whom were employees at the El Chico restaurant, accused of killing waiter Jesus Herrera, 39, during an April 2012 robbery at the Breckenridge Road eatery, which now houses an Italian restaurant. Prosecutors are seeking a life sentence.
His brother, Zackeya Kenya Perry, 21, received that punishment after a jury convicted him in August. The nine women and three men hearing evidence before Circuit Judge Herb Wright are not allowed to know about the younger Perry’s conviction.
Prosecutors contend the men killed Herrera during the holdup because they didn’t like him. Proceedings resume at 9:45 this morning and are expected to conclude today.
The witnesses whom Greene urged jurors to be especially skeptical of are Quantez Dobbins, 21, who has said he was the brothers’ getaway driver, and Kenya Denise Smith, 21, Kiywuan Perry’s former girlfriend and mother of his 3-year-old son.
Also an ex-worker of El Chico, Smith, who has pleaded guilty to hindering apprehension for trying to help the brothers elude police and accepting some of the stolen money, faces a 20-year sentence. She is scheduled to testify today.
Dobbins, also charged with capital murder and aggravated robbery, is cooperating in the hopes that prosecutors will reduce those charges to simple robbery,which carries a 20-year maximum sentence, Greene told jurors.
Dobbins, another former El Chico employee, spent about 45 minutes on the witness stand Tuesday. He told jurors the brothers told him they planned to rob a drug dealer at a neighboring apartment complex. He drove them to the apartments and waited until they returned, when Zackeya Perry said he had just killed someone, Dobbins said.
Dobbins said he didn’t believe the two would rob anyone and had no idea they intended to hold up the restaurant. He said he didn’t really know what had happened until police tracked him down the next morning.
Dobbins testified he only got $100 from the holdup, which netted about $1,200. Dobbins said he was cooperating with prosecutors because he feels guilty about participating in the killing of an innocent man. He quarrelled with Greene when the defense attorney suggested that Dobbins was actually more concerned with getting his charges reduced.
Greene also sparred with former cook Tyrone Barbee, 41, who said he recognized the voice of one of the two masked gunmen who stormed into the restaurant. It was Kiywuan Perry’s voice, Barbee testified, saying he also recognized him by his build.
Barbee testified he was smoking in front of the restaurant when something brushed his shoulder. He looked and saw two armed men, one of them with a gun pointed right at him, he said.
“I looked over and there was a gun in my face,” Barbee said. “He said, ‘Know what this is, pimp?’”
Though the robber who spoke was completely masked with a bandanna, sunglasses and a hood, Barbee said Kiywuan Perry regularly used the term “pimp.” Once he got time to think about it - while he was locked in the restaurant’s walk-in cooler - he said he realized he knew the voice was Perry’s.
It was Barbee’s “courage and strength” that led investigators to identify the Perry brothers as suspects within minutes of the slaying, deputy prosecutor Barbara Mariani told jurors in her opening statement.
She said the brothers could have let Herrera live, locking him in the cooler with Barbee, other employees and customers that night. But they wanted him dead because the 12-year restaurant veteran was a hard worker who set a high standard and demanded his co-workers follow it, she said.
Herrera was shot twice in the back - which shows he was fleeing the brothers - and once in the head, his wound marked by gunpowder and soot, the prosecutor told jurors.
“Jesus Herrera was a hard worker. He expected his co-workers to work hard and for that, he was targeted,” she said. “They made sure he was dead.”
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 03/12/2014