The mother of capital-murder defendant Tony Lenzaro Brooks testified Wednesday that she was "a little scared" of her 29-year-old son because he had threatened to kill both her and her boyfriend on the same June 2013 night he's accused of killing a woman whose body was found burning in a tire pile.
Before prosecutors rested their case in Pulaski County Circuit Court, jurors also heard from his younger sister, who said she was also "a little afraid" of Brooks that same night when he showed up at her apartment unexpectedly to get her to return the Jeep he had been driving to their mother.
The last witness of the day was one of Brooks' four brothers, who testified for the defense that he thought he had seen the defendant asleep on their grandmother's couch at what would have been about the same time the remains of 31-year-old Amy May Hughett were being discovered behind an abandoned building on Young Road in Little Rock.
Prosecutors are seeking a life sentence for Brooks on charges that include corpse abuse. Proceedings before Circuit Judge Herb Wright resume at 9:30 this morning.
The trial is the first of two for Brooks, who is accused of killing Hughett and another woman, 50-year-old Gloria Summage, whose East Eighth Street home was set on fire, eight days apart in June 2013. Summage was the first to die, and Brooks is charged with first-degree murder, corpse abuse and arson in that case, which is set for trial next month.
If Brooks is going tell jurors his version of events, today is the day. The judge told his lawyers to announce this morning whether he would take the stand. Brooks has convictions for aggravated robbery, escape and theft, so testifying could force him to divulge his criminal record to jurors, who otherwise won't be told about his past.
Brooks' lawyers have acknowledged he had sex with Hughett but say that's not proof that he killed her.
Brooks' mother, Barbara Kay Alexander, broke down crying repeatedly during her 56 minutes on the witness stand as deputy prosecutor Jeanna Sherrill quietly but firmly forced Alexander to go over the complaint to Little Rock police that the 47-year-old mother of seven made the night of the killing.
Alexander's statement to police contributed to Brooks becoming a suspect in Hughett's death when his DNA was found.
Alexander, wearing a blouse patterned with skulls, testified that Brooks had called her about four hours before the remains were found to pick him up at the intersection of Young and Geyer Springs roads, about a half-mile from where Hughett was discovered.
She said they'd quarrelled after that because she didn't take him where he wanted to go, his father's house.
But she repeatedly told jurors, in tears, that Brooks didn't mean his threats and would really never hurt her, saying he was just angry and frustrated over his poor relationship with his father.
Alexander said she also went to the police in the hopes that they would arrest him because people had been shooting at him and she hoped he could also be hospitalized for psychiatric treatment.
"I think he said some things he didn't mean. He took it out on me," Alexander told the jury, saying that her memories of the night aren't clear because she was recovering from surgery and had been prescribed pain medication at the time.
Alexander said she gave Brooks her Jeep Grand Cherokee after he told her he would stab and kill her then-boyfriend, Gary Saulsberry, if she woke the man up. He also said he'd kill her, too, a weeping Alexander said.
She briefly snapped at Sherrill when the prosecutor pressed her for details about what Brooks had said and done, and was admonished by the judge.
"Why are you doing this?" Alexander asked.
"Ms. Alexander, just answer the questions that are asked," the judge said.
"I just need you to tell the truth," Sherrill said. "What was the threat?"
Alexander broke down in tears, responding in an unintelligible moan before answering.
"[He said] if you go wake Gary up, I will kill him ... and stab the s*** out of you,'" she told jurors, saying Brooks later apologized to her.
Addressing Sherrill, Alexander also said the prosector had misunderstood a comment Alexander had made in a pretrial meeting when Alexander asked Sherrill whether she had children, and said that "a kid might end up with a bullet to the head." Alexander said the remark was made while she was trying to get the prosecutor to sympathize with her as a mother over the risks of raising children.
The nine women and three men on the jury also got to see Alexander's demeanor change during the time she spent on the witness stand. Alexander was angry and defiant when prosecutors first called her to testify on Tuesday, with her saying she had not been truthful with police when she called them the night in question. Court was adjourned for the day after she had testified for about 15 minutes.
But Alexander returned to the stand calmer and more compliant Wednesday morning, possibly because the judge, outside the presence of the jury, warned her that she had just admitted to a felony crime under oath that could send her to prison.
Brooks' sister testified Wednesday in a blue Pulaski County jail uniform because she's been jailed for two months since her refusal to obey a subpoena delayed the trial at least once.
Earlmesha Coleman, 20, denied Brooks was acting erratically when he showed up at her apartment and asked her to return the Jeep to her mother's home on Eagle Drive.
But she also told jurors she drove "80" in the sport utility vehicle partly because she was a "little bit" scared of Brooks and wanted to get the errand done as quickly as possible.
"I felt like he was on drugs, and I was kind of scared," she said, earning her release from jail with her 40 minutes of testimony.
One of three defense witnesses Wednesday, Darrell Dewayne Profitt, 25, said he saw his older brother asleep about the same time the victim's body was found.
But he also acknowledged he was not sure what time that was. Profitt said he was reckoning the time because his "little son" had just awakened Brooks on the couch. He said he estimated the time of day because the boy woke him up every day at the same time, right around sunrise.
Metro on 08/20/2015