Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen on Monday rejected defense accusations that Little Rock police manipulated a witness into identifying a murder suspect accused of killing a Cracker Barrel waiter last year.
Brandon Deion Sanders Moore, 23, is scheduled to stand trial next week on a first-degree murder charge in the April 2015 slaying of Cortez Ferrell.
Ferrell, a 26-year-old father of two, was found fatally wounded behind the restaurant at the Shackleford Crossing shopping center on South Shackleford Road.
Two of Moore's co-workers witnessed the shooting, but only one of them, 29-year-old Melvin Frazier, was able to identify Moore from a six-man photographic lineup as the person he was "80 percent" certain was the gunman, detective Greg Siegler told the judge.
Defense attorney Rob Berry challenged the police tactic of showing Frazier two photo lineups, both times including Moore, arguing that police had done that deliberately to induce Frazier into choosing a suspect investigators had decided upon. The photograph they used of Moore in the second lineup was also more vividly colored than the other five photographs, Berry told the judge.
Detective Greg Siegler said police made a deliberate effort not to suggest to Frazier whom he should identify, warning him both times that a suspect may or may not be included in the set of photos.
Seigler testified he used two lineups because the first one used a driver's license photo of Moore that was a year old. Frazier did not identify anyone out of that lineup, the detective said. The witness was shown the first lineup the day after the killing and the second photo set two days later, Siegler said.
Seiger told the judge that he decided to show Frazier the second lineup because it included a photograph police had taken the night of the slaying when they had met with Moore. He testified that Moore appeared to be about 12 or 13 in the old photo, while in the picture the police took he appeared to be more mature.
The defendant's appearance had changed dramatically over the course of a year, said deputy prosecutor Barbara Mariani, who argued that police had acted appropriately.
"The two photographs are very, very different," she told the judge. "In a year's time, he looked very different."
The judge, after examining both sets of photographs with a magnifying glass, sided with the prosecutor, noting that Moore's first photograph showed him with longer hair and a slight mustache while he had close-cropped hair and was cleanshaven in the second.
Moore was arrested about 21/2 weeks after the slaying. He was released on bond three weeks later, but was jailed in September upon court order after prosecutors complained that he had violated a no-contact order by sending a witness threatening messages through an assumed name on Facebook, including photographs of the witness' statement to police, court records show.
According to an arrest affidavit, witnesses told police that Ferrell had been arguing with a man in a light blue Lincoln Town Car who then shot him and fled.
Investigators learned that Moore's girlfriend, Latoya Woods also worked at the restaurant, and she told police that Moore drove a car like that, which belonged to his grandmother. She also said that Moore had texted her at work about Ferrell on the day of the shooting.
A neighbor also told police that Moore said he'd shot a man in the chest outside the Cracker Barrel who had been "messing with his girl," after the man approached him to fight and Moore got scared, according to the affidavit.
Another Cracker Barrel worker told investigators that Ferrell had pointed out the blue Lincoln that night and told her Woods' boyfriend was driving it, according to the affidavit. The woman said that Moore and Ferrell had been "having words" over the woman earlier.
Court records show Moore has felony convictions for marijuana and drug paraphernalia possession in September 2012 that earned him two years on probation. He and a second man, 32-year-old Terrance Renolo Neal of Fayetteville, were arrested together at the Fairfield Apartments, 1912 Green Mountain Drive, in Little Rock by police investigating a complaint about two men in a red car trying to sell drugs to a child.
Officers found the men in Neal's red Mercury Mountaineer, and Neal told police he had marijuana and a pistol in his car. Officers found a loaded .25-caliber handgun and five small bags of marijuana on Moore while a second gun, which had been stolen the previous year, was found under the driver's seat.
Police also discovered another 14 small bags of marijuana in the vehicle, court filings show. Neal was sentenced to five years of probation after pleading guilty to felony charges of possession of marijuana, drug paraphernalia and felon in possession of a firearm.
Metro on 04/26/2016