Attorneys for a capital-murder suspect who authorities say is also part of an armed robbery crew called The Taliban Gang said Monday that North Little Rock police interrogation tactics crossed the line into illegality when detectives got their client to incriminate himself in the July 2015 slaying in which he's charged.
Lawyers for Zavier Marquis Pree of Jacksonville called on Pulaski County Circuit Judge Herb Wright during a Monday hearing to suppress the police interview with the 20-year-old Jacksonville man, saying that detectives violated Pree's rights during the questioning.
Pree was questioned on video over a five-hour period the day 18-year-old Aaron Crawford was killed, and the judge had been watching the recording to prepare for Monday's one-hour proceeding.
Wright said he'll make a decision on the legality of the statement by the end of the week.
Pree did not testify Monday, but his attorneys told the judge that they have evidence another man is responsible for the slaying and that Pree was covering for that person when police questioned him.
The mortally wounded Crawford was found shortly before sunrise July 9, 2015, in the parking lot of the U.S. Bank on Riverfront Place in North Little Rock.
He had been shot five times but was able to tell police that his killer had taken his red 2006 Dodge Magnum, before he died in hospital about 12 hours later.
Police used Crawford's cellphone to trace his route to the bank from Pree's neighborhood and also connect him to the defendant through Facebook posts. Police found the gun used to kill Crawford in Pree's bedroom.
Deputy prosecutor Scott Duncan said police used court-approved tactics to question Pree, such as trying to build a rapport with him during questioning, telling him what witnesses had said about him and describing other evidence they had collected.
Those techniques also include exaggerating or lying about the extent of the evidence, Duncan told the judge.
Duncan also disputed defense accusations that investigators had not fully informed Pree of his rights. The defendant had been read his rights twice before he was questioned, the prosecutor said -- the first time just after police arrested him behind the wheel of Crawford's car, parked across the street from Pree's home.
Pree was read his rights a second time, which was recorded on the video, and Duncan showed the judge the rights waiver Pree signed and initialed that states he had understood his rights and knew what he was doing by submitting to a police interview.
Defense attorney Omar Greene said police had "glossed over" informing Pree of his rights to remain silent and have legal counsel in a rushed reading of the waiver recorded on the video.
"If [reading his rights] was a foot race, they might be winning a medal in Rio," Greene told the judge.
He also said the detective who questioned Pree went too far by telling Pree that their conversation would be "cordial [and] polite," not adversarial.
The officer also never told Pree he was going to be questioned, instead saying they were just going to "talk."
"To act like his buddy, it just nullifies Miranda," Greene said, referring to the 1966 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Miranda v. Arizona that requires police to inform suspects of their rights, warn them what can happen if they talk to police, and make sure suspects understand their rights.
Greene questioned the detective, Dane Pedersen, sharply during the hearing about how the officer talked to his client. He accused Pedersen of deliberately downplaying the severity of the charges to Pree.
"You tell him, 'Let's not make this worse than it is,' but nothing is worse than capital murder, is there?" Greene said.
"Yes, there is," Pedersen responded. "There's two counts of capital murder. Or three counts."
"You told him, 'You're not hurting yourself by being honest,'" Greene said. "But in fact, the more he talked the bigger hole he got into."
"My goal is to get at the truth," Pedersen said.
"It's not getting incriminating evidence?" the attorney asked.
Questioned by the prosecutor, Pedersen testified that he did not know the extent of the evidence police had collected while he was interrogating Pree, so some of what he told the man -- like a claim that a surveillance video showed Pree driving Crawford's car from the scene of the killing -- turned out to be exaggerated. There is video, but it doesn't show who is inside the vehicle, Pedersen said.
Pedersen testified that Crawford did not die until about 15 minutes after the officer began the interview with Pree, so it was some time before they both learned the man had died.
"My goal is to get him to tell the truth," he told the judge. "I want him to know other people are talking to us and we're not fabricating."
Also at issue is what Pree told detective Gary Jones just before police took Pree to jail.
Jones told the judge that, as he was walking Pree to the police car that would take him away, Pree was asking why he had been charged with capital murder and aggravated robbery.
Jones said he told Pree that officers had collected enough evidence to charge him.
"I went on to explain that we knew where it happened and why it happened, we just want to know why it happened," Jones testified.
Pree told him that that Crawford had made him nervous by referring to a shooting and that Pree shot the younger man once, the detective said.
Pree said the wounded Crawford then got out of the car and fell down and Pree got behind the wheel and drove away, Jones told the judge.
Jones said he hadn't read Pree his rights but he knew that Pedersen had.
In a separate case, Pree and two co-defendants from Little Rock, Travoz Larry Barker, 20, and Deonte Dequan Powell, 21, have been indicted on at least seven federal robbery charges each over accusations they are responsible for five armed holdups in Little Rock over the course of about a month last summer.
Prosecutors said the three called themselves the Taliban Gang because of the way they would wrap shirts around their faces during the robberies.
Metro on 08/11/2016