The Little Rock man serving a life sentence for murdering a woman and setting her body on fire will not stand trial in a similar homicide case after a key witness stopped cooperating with prosecutors.
Tony Lenzaro Brooks was convicted of capital murder and abuse of corpse in Pulaski County Circuit Court two weeks ago for the June 2013 beating death of 31-year-old Amy May Hughett, whose burning body was found behind an abandoned building on Young Road in southwest Little Rock.
Brooks' DNA was found on the woman's body, and his mother Barbara Coleman testified she had picked him up from the neighborhood about four hours before Hughett's remains were found.
Testifying against his lawyers' advice, Brooks blamed the killing on an acquaintance and told jurors he had last seen Hughett alive when he had paid her for sex at his home the afternoon before her body was discovered.
Brooks had also been charged with first-degree murder, arson and abuse of corpse over the slaying of Gloria Summage, also in June 2013, eight days before Hughett was killed. The 50-year-old woman was found stabbed to death on the kitchen floor of her burning East Eighth Street home.
On Wednesday, deputy prosecutor Jeanna Sherrill told Judge Herb Wright that prosecutors were dropping the charges over Summage's killing because the witness had broken off communication with her and could not be found.
The witness had placed Brooks near Summage's home just before the fire was reported and told police that Brooks had covered his face with his shirt when he realized the witness had seen him, Sherrill said.
Prosecutors also dropped charges based on complaints from deputies that Brooks had thrown feces and urine on them while he was jailed. His capital murder conviction resulted in an automatic life sentence, but the jury that convicted him was able to add a $10,000 fine to his sentence on the corpse abuse charge after hearing the jailer's testimony.
According to testimony, Brooks was known to stockpile cups of bodily waste in his jail cell. He was accused of attacking jailers in June and July, throwing suspected urine on one deputy, Vicki Clark, getting some in her mouth. On separate occasions he threw feces into the face of another, Savannah Poland, also getting some in her mouth, and threw urine on two other deputies, LaRonn Smith and Debra Adams, according to testimony.
Sgt. Alberto Jiminez testified that Brooks was known to keep cups of urine and feces in his cell. The deputy also described how Brooks had locked him and another officer, Sgt. George Clark, in his cell in June before being recaptured by jailers.
Jiminez told jurors that Brooks had snatched the handcuff key from Deputy Stephanie Durkin, who was re-shackling him after he had completed his one-hour recreation break.
When Brooks refused to return the key and denied that he had it, Jiminez and Clark went into his cell to search it and Brooks.
Jiminez said Brooks ran out of his cell, slammed the door closed and grabbed a broom and a bottle of bleach. He sprayed the bleach at deputies who were coming to help, but officer Robert Nance was able to use pepper spray on Brooks, who fell to the floor. The officers were released from the cell, and Brooks was taken to the hospital for an X-ray that showed he had ingested the key. Brooks passed it the following night, Jiminez testified.
Police, court and jail records show Brooks has spent only nine months of the past 12 years as a free man. The records also show he had been charged with rape when he was 12 in 1998, but don't say how the juvenile-court case was resolved, and that in 1999, when he was 13, he had been involved in a car crash that killed a friend.
Brooks has been in trouble with the law almost continually since he turned 17, when he was being held in the Alexander Youth Services Center on a misdemeanor weapons charge. In April 2003, four days after his 17th birthday, Brooks was one of four teenagers, ages 15 to 17, who escaped the center after threatening a guard, then stealing her car and crashing it through the Bryant facility's front gate.
Three of the teens were arrested within hours, but Brooks was at large for two months before he was arrested in June 2003 after a high-speed chase in North Little Rock with state troopers. When youth services officials tried to take him back into custody, he fought them until he was subdued with pepper spray, court records show.
In August 2003, Brooks was sentenced to six years in prison after pleading guilty to theft, escape and fleeing charges. Prosecutors dropped kidnapping and criminal mischief charges in exchange for his guilty plea.
His next arrest was for misdemeanor battery on Selma Street in Little Rock in March 2005. He was fined $605 and sentenced to a year on probation.
But he was arrested again on felony charges in April 2005, about a week after his 19th birthday, when police in Little Rock stopped Brooks and another man driving a stolen 1985 Chevrolet Silverado pickup. Officers were investigating a break-in at a tire store on Byrd Street, and the truck had been taken from the First Methodist Church at 8th and Spring streets the night before the men were arrested.
While out on bond the following month, and listed as a parole absconder, Brooks carjacked a 23-year-old woman at gunpoint in the middle of the night at 15th and Commerce streets, taking her 1995 Jeep Cherokee. Police found the sport utility vehicle a few minutes later, but they were led on a brief chase that ended when the driver stopped the vehicle in the middle of the road and he and two other men inside fled.
Brooks pleaded guilty to all charges, aggravated robbery, felony theft and theft by receiving, in August 2005 in exchange for a 10-year prison sentence that required he serve seven years before qualifying for parole.
He was paroled in March 2013, then returned to prison with his parole revoked in July 2013 after his arrest on murder charges.
Metro on 09/05/2015