A Little Rock man who spent 413 days in jail awaiting trial on a rape charge was acquitted in 16 minutes Tuesday by a Pulaski County jury.
John Wayne McCann, represented by defense attorney Amy Douglas, was released from jail after the one-day trial presided over by Circuit Court Judge Barry Sims.
McCann was living in Mabelvale when he was arrested in April 2015 on accusations that he beat and sexually assaulted a neighbor in September 2014.
The 40-year-old woman told police that she and McCann had been drinking at a friend's house and that she had left to go to another friend's home when McCann came up behind her, threw her over his shoulder, carried her to an abandoned home and raped her.
She said he had punched, choked and bitten her during the attack.
McCann told police that he had been letting the woman, whom he has known since junior high school, stay with him and his mother for the previous two weeks. He said they had had sex before, but not on the night that she said he attacked her, a police report said.
He told police that she was so drunk when she walked out of the house that he followed her to keep her from getting hurt.
But she attacked him, he said, and they ended up rolling around on the ground when he defended himself. He told police he then carried her back to the house where they had been drinking.
McCann still faces a charge of witness retaliation over accusations that he accosted Steve Carnahan, a witness in the rape case, 12 days later and hit him in the head, according to police reports. The men scuffled, and McCann called Carnahan "a rat for talking to police," which could send him to prison for 20 years, the reports said.
Carnahan told detectives that he heard the woman screaming for help after McCann carried her away, police said.
The retaliation charge is a Class D felony that carries up to six years in prison.
Court records show that in September 2011, McCann was arrested at a former girlfriend's Shannon Hills home after police responded to a late-night 911 call from a woman whose phone call was cut off.
Officers reported hearing Michelle Scheibner screaming when they arrived at the residence and saw McCann going into the house.
When officers approached the residence, they found Scheibner holding onto a porch post with her arms and legs with a cellphone in her hand.
The officers had to overcome a combative and screaming McCann to arrest him, according to court records. Scheibner told investigators that McCann had entered her home with a key that she did not know he had.
She told officers that she ran outside and called 911, but McCann took her phone and ended the call.
McCann was charged with felony false imprisonment and misdemeanor counts of domestic battering, but those charges were dropped. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor resisting arrest charge seven months later and was sentenced to probation.
In Pulaski County, he was convicted of breaking or entering, a felony, and misdemeanor theft for stealing a lawn tiller from a Sweet Home bait shop in October 1991 with his younger brother.
In March 1998, when McCann was 28, he was charged with third-degree carnal abuse involving a girl under the age of 16, but prosecutors dropped the case two months later.
Metro on 05/26/2016