FAYETTEVILLE -- A Washington County circuit judge denied a motion for a mistrial Thursday from the attorneys representing a man accused of attacking a woman last fall on the Lake Fayetteville trail.
Thursday was the second day in Richard Leroy Turner's trial for kidnapping and aggravated assault, which is set to continue this morning. Prosecutors say Turner tackled April Wallace, 28, punched her repeatedly, squeezed her throat and dragged her off the trail into the woods on Sept. 13, 2015. Turner's attorneys say he's the wrong man.
The defense's motion for a mistrial centered on a video recorded from a police patrol vehicle while an officer talked with a man who was never a suspect but was similar to Wallace's description of her attacker. Detective Roy Knotts showed frames of the video to Wallace and ruled him out as a suspect, he told the jurors Thursday.
Bobby Digby, one of Turner's attorneys, said the original video should have been provided to him earlier as possible evidence of Turner's innocence. The man in the video was acting "erratically," he told Circuit Judge Joanna Taylor, much like the attacker had been in the moments after the assault.
Senior deputy prosecutor Terra Stephenson argued it was no secret where the frames came from, and the judge heard a similar argument from the defense earlier in the week. Taylor agreed, noting the defense didn't request the video.
Jurors watched a recording of the 1½-hour interview Knotts conducted with Turner after his arrest in November 2015. Knotts told Turner that DNA found on a pair of sunglasses at the crime scene matched Turner's and that the victim said her attacker wore a metal ring engraved with the word "dad" similar to one Turner owned.
"Unless I have something else, I believe you're involved in this," Knotts told Turner in the video, adding he was simply looking for the best explanation of what happened.
Turner repeatedly denied he was the attacker, questioning whether someone was deliberately targeting him and suggesting he might have sold the sunglasses to someone else before the attack. He asked if someone had looked for fingerprints on Wallace's skin; Knotts said no.
"I understand where you're coming from 100 percent, but at the same time it just don't make sense," Turner said.
Jurors also heard from Wallace and two other people who believe they saw the attacker during the weekend of the attack. All three confidently identified Turner.
"I had no idea what to do. I didn't know if I would come out [of the woods]," said Wallace, a Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter.
Digby pointed to gaps in the witness accounts. One didn't notice tattoos on the man's arms like Turner's, for example. Wallace also initially described the ring as silver, while Turner owns a gold one.
Metro on 11/18/2016