The trial is underway for an eight-time parole absconder accused in the 2013 kidnapping and killing of an 18-year-old Fayetteville man.
Prosecutors are seeking a life sentence for Darrell Dennis, who faces charges including capital murder, aggravated robbery and kidnapping in the death of Forrest Abrams.
Tyler Hodges, an acquaintance of Abrams whom Dennis is also accused of kidnapping and robbing, told police that Dennis took him and Abrams at gunpoint from a Little Rock gas station and eventually left Hodges behind when Hodges went inside a residence at West Fourth and Woodrow streets. Abrams' body was later found at Woodrow and West 11th streets.
A 2013 article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette revealed the lengthy parole-violation history of Dennis before his arrest, sparking a systemwide review of the state parole system that in turn led to a change in leadership and numerous policy shifts.
During opening statements in Pulaski County Circuit Court on Wednesday on the first day of Dennis' trial, his attorney, Tom Devine, questioned Hodges' ability to recollect what happened, noting that Hodges had been using drugs and alcohol that night and was in a "drunken state."
Deputy prosecutor Marianne Satterfield said Hodges may not remember every detail, but he recalls Dennis well.
"He remembers that man's face," she told the jury. "That man's face is etched on Tyler Hodges' mind, just like the images of the planes flying into the towers on 9/11."
Satterfield walked the jury of eight women and four men through several of the key witnesses in the case, including one man whose testimony from a previous hearing will be read because he has subsequently died and another man who she said will testify Dennis admitted the killing and said his "only mistake was letting the other one live."
"He has boasted and bragged he's going to beat this charge," Satterfield said.
She noted the kidnapping happened late at night at a gas station where numerous violent crimes have occurred and told the jurors that the witnesses won't be "choir boys."
Devine asked the jury to question the witnesses' motives, calling the witness who died a "paid informant" who received the "highest amount of reward he could" for cooperating with police. Hodges, meanwhile, was intoxicated and he picked Dennis out of a photo-lineup in which Dennis was the only possible suspect who matched Hodges' original description of a "yellow-skinned black male," Devine said.
He said to the jury that Dennis became a suspect as police scrambled to make an arrest, not wanting to let an 18-year-old's killing go unsolved.
"No one wants that to happen," he said. "Someone has to be a sacrificial lamb in this case."
The trial is ongoing Wednesday before Judge Chris Piazza.
See Thursday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full coverage.