Three Little Rock men convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison as teenagers made their first court appearance Wednesday to begin the resentencing process ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court.
For the first time since they were convicted in separate cases, Mervin Jenkins, 35; Damarcus Jordan, 32; and Charles Lee, 43, returned to the Pulaski County Courthouse.
They will all be provided attorneys at public expense, just as they were at their original trials. Jenkins and Jordan will have to return to court in two weeks because the Public Defender Commission needs time to find lawyers for them.
An attorney was available Wednesday for Lee, who was convicted and sentenced in February 1993. He is due back in court on Jan. 9 for the judge to schedule his sentencing.
Circuit Judge Herb Wright said he wanted to give both sides plenty of time to find and review old case files and locate the evidence from the trials.
The resentencings have also raised legal issues that the Arkansas Supreme Court may have worked out by the time Lee returns to court, the judge said.
Lee was 19 in August 1992 when he killed 23-year-old Phillip Cordova during a late-night robbery that both prosecution and defense described as a drug deal gone bad at a parking lot at Roosevelt Road and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
Lee was the youngest of the three suspects arrested by police and was identified as the gunman at trial by a woman with Cordova when he was killed and by co-defendant Mance Samuel Settles, who was 20 at the time.
Settles pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor theft count for taking the woman's wallet, which contained $27. He received a four-month jail sentence.
Settles testified against Lee at his February 1993 trial. Lee's fingerprints and a palm print were found on the truck Cordova had been driving.
Lee, admitting to being a cocaine dealer, testified that he did not shoot Cordova.
Jurors took 30 minutes to convict him. His other co-defendant, Barry Lamont Johnson, then 32, was cleared of capital murder at trial the next year, but convicted of aggravated robbery and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Jenkins was a 16-year-old 10th-grader at Central High School in December 1997, three months after 19-year-old Brian Young was killed. The older teen, who had just enlisted in the Marines, had been found dead next to a pay phone at a gas station at 3704 Asher Ave. in September 1997.
Young had been shot seven times in the back while on the phone with his girlfriend. She testified at Jenkins' May 2000 trial that she heard Young say he recognized someone in a group approaching him as someone who had "jumped" him earlier.
She said she heard shots, then the sound of Young sighing deeply before the phone went quiet.
Jenkins told police he shot the older teen out of fear after Young had glared at him.
Testimony at trial revealed that victim and killer had belonged to rival gangs and that they had also feuded over Jenkins' girlfriend.
Jenkins' attorney presented no evidence and told jurors his client was actually guilty of second-degree murder. The jury deliberated 15 minutes to find him guilty as charged.
The victim in Jordan's case was 37-year-old Herman Lockhart, a married father of 10 who was working at his second job, delivering pizza for Pizza Hut, when he was ambushed in the driveway of a southwest Little Rock home after making his final delivery of the night.
A teenager who lived at the West 50th Street residence, Raymond Mitchell Williams, got his younger sister to order a pizza while he and two 16-year-old friends, Jordan and Charles Robinson Jr., waited outside to rob the deliveryman.
Jordan shot Lockhart in the chest when the teens confronted him.
Questioned by police, Jordan first named Robinson as the shooter. He later admitted to the shooting, but said the gun accidentally went off when Lockhart grabbed for it.
Jordan also told police he needed money to buy clothes and other things because his mother had told him he needed to get out on his own. He did not testify and was found guilty in less than 20 minutes.
Robinson was convicted at trial of first-degree murder and aggravated robbery and sentenced to 30 years in prison in July 2003. He will qualify for parole in March 2022 when he is 37.
Williams, who was 18 at the time of the killing, pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery and accepted a 30-year sentence that will make him 39 when he is first eligible for early release, a month before Robinson.
The U.S. Supreme Court has invalidated the life sentences of 55 Arkansas prisoners in 26 counties -- 54 men and one woman -- who were convicted of capital murder as teenagers. The decision does not affect their murder convictions, and they can still be sentenced to life.
The court barred the death penalty in 2005 for criminals who are under age 18, eliminated life imprisonment for those teenagers, except the ones convicted of murder, in 2010, then prohibited automatic life-without-parole sentences for teen killers in 2012.
Arkansas' teen capital-murder convicts all became eligible for re-sentencing in January, with the high court's decision that any convict who received an automatic life sentence while under age 18 was owed a new sentence.
Seventeen of those convicts, all sentenced in Pulaski County between 1980 and 2003, are returning to be scheduled for a sentencing trial.
The first two were back last week, 43-year-old William Smith Nazeem and 31-year-old Detric Avelle Franklin, and had their sentencings set for the winter months.
Metro on 07/07/2016