HOT SPRINGS — A specially appointed judge did not issue a ruling Friday regarding missing video that the defense says is crucial in the negligent-homicide trial of Garland County Circuit Judge Wade Naramore.
Instead, that ruling is now set for the first day of trial, which will be Aug. 15-19 before retired Judge John Langston in Garland County Circuit Court.
Naramore’s 17-month-old son, Thomas Naramore, was found unresponsive in a car July 24, 2015, in Hot Springs on a day when the outside temperature reached the upper 90s, with heat indexes between 104.8 and 106.5 degrees.
Attorneys for Naramore, 36, argued Friday that the video, saved to an unencrypted USB drive and later deemed missing, would have provided an outline of the judge’s demeanor as he exited and re-entered his vehicle from a morning of duties in court.
The prosecution said the lack of video should not be looked at as exculpatory evidence and dismissed defense statements that a perceived lack of notification to Naramore’s attorneys of video complications was intentional.
Naramore, who was seated beside his wife during the hearing, wiped away tears toward the end of Friday’s pretrial hearing as one of his attorneys, Erin Cassinelli, outlined the defense’s argument regarding the missing video evidence.
In May, the special prosecutor’s office told the defense that the recording was “lost,” the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette previously reported. Nearly two months later, the state Crime Laboratory said that while the full video could not be retrieved, a short excerpt from the day of Thomas’ death was available.
Three employees of the Hot Springs Police Department, including the police chief and lead detective, testified during Friday’s pretrial hearing, the last scheduled before Naramore’s trial. An employee with the state Crime Laboratory also took the stand.
Jeff Taylor with the state Crime Lab told the court that four files were listed in a screenshot sent to him as a visual aid in seeking the missing video file on the USB drive.
That screenshot, which was requested by the defense in court, showed the short excerpt as well as an index file and two other documents, he said. The contents of the two other documents were not immediately clear.
Read Saturday’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.
Information for this article was contributed by David Showers of the Sentinel-Record in Hot Springs and Jeannie Roberts of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.