Prosecutors can tell jurors that a 38-year-old Little Rock woman admitted owning the gun her 6-year-old nephew used to fatally shoot himself in her car, a Pulaski County circuit judge has ruled.
Kenya Brevard, represented by attorney Denese Fletcher, had argued that everything Brevard told police the day of the shooting outside a house on Lamar Street should be barred from being used as evidence against her because officers had taken advantage of her.
Brevard is charged with possession of a firearm by a felon and misdemeanor negligent homicide in the November death of Eron Wallace Jones, the son of her sister, Tara Burks, 33. He died barely a week before his seventh birthday.
Fletcher said that Brevard was so distraught in the immediate aftermath of discovering the boy had shot himself in the face in her car with her gun that she didn't know what she was saying at the scene.
The 15-minute police interview she gave later that night also should be suppressed because Brevard was still under the influence of a doctor-administered sedative for grief that kept her from thinking clearly.
"They were aware of what was going on and took advantage of it," Fletcher said at a recent court hearing. "The entire case is based on what she said about herself while she was drugged."
Deputy prosecutor Jeanna Sherrill disputed those allegations, saying that the police recording shows that Brevard was engaged in the conversation with police, able to understand and respond to their questions, ask questions of her own and recall details of what had happened.
On Monday, Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen sided with prosecutors in a three-page decision, ruling that there had been no wrongdoing by police and clearing the way for prosecutors to play the 15-minute recording for jurors, along with allowing testimony from the officers who talked to Brevard when the mother of two goes on trial next month. She faces up to 20 years in prison.
Griffen ruled that what Brevard said at the scene about forgetting she had a pistol in the back seat of her blue Buick Rendezvous was an "excited utterance" made before she had been arrested and without police asking her a question.
"The evidence shows that when Brevard made statements at the scene, she was not in custody, under arrest nor was she being interrogated by officers," the judge wrote. "Brevard's statements were spontaneous, and therefore, admissible."
Her questioning by detectives that evening, conducted immediately after her release from a hospital emergency room after a panic attack, also passed muster because she had been informed of her right to remain silent and have an attorney present, but signed a waiver stating that she understood those rights and would speak to police, the judge wrote.
Brevard did not sound like she was incapacitated or confused on the recording, which was played for the judge at a June 13 hearing, Griffen wrote.
Brevard did not testify at last week's hearing, but police officer Nicholas Smith, the first to arrive at the shooting, told the judge that he arrived to find a weeping and wailing woman holding towels to the bleeding head of a little boy who apparently had been shot.
Before he could find out what was happening, the woman said, "He's just 6 years old. I forgot the gun was in there," Smith testified at the hearing.
Smith said he took over from Brevard, applying pressure to the boy's wounds until an ambulance arrived and emergency medical workers could take over. A second ambulance was called for Brevard, and Smith said he asked her while she was in the vehicle whether she remembered anything else.
Brevard told him that the boy wouldn't get out of the car when they arrived at the Lamar Street home of a friend. She said she went into the backyard with her daughter then went back to the car, opened the door and found the boy had been shot.
She told the detectives the weapon was a small-caliber Glock handgun that she had bought for self-defense and to get her concealed-carry permit about a year earlier. Brevard said she had just added a laser sight to the firearm a couple of days earlier. She said she had put the gun in her car that same morning after it had been in her boyfriend's closet at the Lamar Street home.
Brevard has been legally prohibited from owning a gun since she was 19 and pleaded guilty to felony check forgery in May 1997, although she has completed her sentence, three years of probation, and had the Class C felony conviction expunged in February 2001.
Metro on 06/22/2016