HOT SPRINGS -- As many as 180 people will be directed to report for jury duty Monday when a negligent homicide case against Circuit Judge Wade Naramore begins, according to the Garland County circuit clerk's office.
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The four to five jury panels that have been summoned are about twice the number called for a typical criminal trial, according to the clerk's office.
All 1,200 people selected as possible jurors for the circuit's May-September term were sent general questionnaires to help weed out people who would need to be excused from jury duty. Naramore's attorneys asked the court this summer for a questionnaire specific to his trial, calling the supplemental layer of vetting a necessity in facilitating jury selection amid the media coverage the trial has attracted.
"Using a jury questionnaire simply expedites the process to the extent possible, saving the court time and avoiding the necessity of asking too many repetitive questions and asking numerous questions of jurors, who, for one reason or another, have cause to be excused prior to that extensive questioning," Erin Cassinelli, one of Naramore's attorneys, said in a June email.
As of last week, 373 of the 432 special-circumstance jury questionnaires sent to the remaining people in the May-September term had been returned, the clerk's office said, adding that potential jurors who haven't filled out the survey will be asked to do so when they arrive Monday.
Negligent homicide is a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in county jail and a $2,500 fine. The probable cause affidavit in support of Naramore's Feb. 11 arrest accuses him of leaving his 18-month-old son, Thomas, in the back seat of a hot car last summer. The boy had a 107-degree core body temperature at the time of death, according to the affidavit.
State law allows both the prosecution and defense to dismiss three jurors without cause during jury selection for a misdemeanor trial, whereas the defense is entitled to eight and the prosecution to six such removals in a felony trial.
In addition to the special questionnaires, the defense has asked for a special jury instruction that would allow it to tell jurors that the Hot Springs Police Department mishandled footage from surveillance video of the Garland County Courts Building parking lot recorded on the day of the boy's death, preventing the introduction of evidence the defense said shows Naramore was unaware he had left his son in the back seat.
His attorneys filed a motion Thursday to add emails exchanged between the prosecutor's office and the Police Department to the exhibits presented at the July 29 pretrial hearing. The motion said the emails contradict police testimony concerning the parking lot video, which reportedly shows Naramore going into the building after exiting his car and returning about three hours later.
The case's lead investigator, Mark Fallis, had testified that the video shows Naramore exiting and entering his car, but it wasn't included with the case file the department provided to a deputy prosecutor.
The motion said an email exchange between deputy prosecutor Charles Finkenbinder and police Sgt. Chris Hayes indicates the department was aware of the video's unavailability as early as March 30, when Finkenbinder told Hays it, along with video and audio recorded at the scene by police dashboard cameras and body microphones, was missing from the case file.
"At the hearing, [Hot Springs Police Department] witnesses generally testified they were unaware of the missing evidence until late May," the motion said. "They, however, were specifically advised to send copies of the courthouse video and confirmed they would do so in March. There was no mention of the missing evidence to defense counsel until May 27."
Email exchanges included in defense pleadings indicate defense attorneys have been seeking a copy of the video since Naramore was arraigned in March.
The defense has asked the court to exclude the admission of any evidence from the video except information from Fallis' report indicating the time of day Naramore exited and returned to his car. Special Judge John Langston said he would rule on the exclusion and jury instruction requests before the trial begins Monday.
Fallis testified that his handling of the thumb drive he recorded the video onto the day of the boy's death was inconsistent with proper chain of custody procedure. He said he thought he transferred the video file onto the Police Department's server, but he had no documentation showing that the transfer had been made. The video file also wasn't included in Fallis' initial evidence report.
The state Crime Laboratory in Little Rock was unable to retrieve the footage from the thumb drive and several other items thought to contain the video.
Fallis testified that he uses the thumb drive to collect crime scene videos that he transfers to the department's server. The Crime Lab's digital evidence section chief testified that the thumb drive contained "thousands" of files related to items of evidence concerning other cases.
Metro on 08/14/2016