Pulaski County Circuit Judge Barry Sims ruled Monday that a jury will be allowed to hear evidence, including a brief recording, of how a Little Rock murder suspect admitted to severely beating a fellow jail inmate, a man who was injured to the point he now has seizures and must use a walker.
Sims rejected defense accusations that Ronnie Juan Hervey's rights were violated when sheriff's deputies taped him making incriminating statements after jailers found 42-year-old Darrell Dean critically injured in the jail's outdoor recreation area in May 2014.
Also disputed by the defense was the legality of how another deputy came to overhear Hervey telling another inmate about how he had beaten a man.
After hearing testimony from deputies and the recording, taken while an investigator tried to interview Hervey, Sims sided with prosecutors Jill Kamps and Robbie Jones in rejecting claims of wrongdoing against the deputies. The decision means prosecutors will be able to use that evidence at Hervey's trial on Wednesday.
Charged with first-degree battery, Hervey faces up to 40 years in prison. He cannot qualify for parole because of his convictions for robbery, first-degree battery, drugs and weapons possession.
Hervey is also facing a December trial on a first-degree murder charge over accusations that he fatally shot Martin Henderson in April 2014 at a Rinke Road residence in Little Rock.
Police found 38-year-old Henderson fatally wounded in the doorway of the home, which belongs to an acquaintance of Hervey, court files show.
Hervey was arrested the next day after telling police that he had seen two masked men shoot the victim. He had been in jail 16 days when Dean was attacked.
Dean had been jailed the night before in an attack on another man and had been in the recreation yard waiting to be taken to Little Rock District Court to be arraigned, court records show.
Testifying Monday, sheriff's investigator Jeff Allison said he recorded a brief portion of a meeting between Hervey and another deputy who was investigating Dean's injuries, which put him on life support in the hospital for a time.
"My hand hurts. My arm's numb," Hervey states on the recording. "I wasn't trying to kill him. I was trying to beat him out."
Allison said the recording was only a couple of minutes long because the battery failed when he started the device then malfunctioned after he replaced the battery.
The deputy said he was in another room monitoring the meeting by closed-circuit television when he started the recording because Hervey, after saying he didn't want to give a statement about what had happened, continued talking about it to the other deputy. Hervey said he attacked Dean because he thought the man had been looking at Hervey's genitals.
"I heard him say it was a fight," Allison said. "He said he thought [Dean] was looking at him in the shower."
Both Allison and the other investigator, Kevin Collie, testified that Hervey had been read his rights before Collie had tried to question him. Collie said he didn't know that Allison had recorded anything but that it was common practice for deputies to record suspects in that manner.
"When someone's just talking, just rambling, we've done that before," he testified.
Collie told the judge that Hervey had started talking about fighting Dean from the moment Collie transported him from the jail all the way to the interview room.
"Dude was trying to see my d***. Hell yes, I beat his ass," Collie said, repeating what he'd heard Hervey say.
Collie said he didn't question Hervey about what happened because the defendant said he didn't want to talk about it, but then kept talking.
"All the way down from the jail, he was talking about what had happened. He asked me if the other guy died. He said it was just two guys fight," Collie said. "I didn't question him because he said, 'Maybe I should get an attorney.' I said, 'That's entirely up to you,' and he just kept on talking."
The final witness was Deputy Pearl Watkins, who said she had listened in through an intercom on a conversation between Hervey and another inmate that same day.
Hervey had contacted her through the intercom, asking about where his property had been stored, and Watkins told the judge that she kept the intercom open when he started talking to the other inmate.
"I can't remember word for word," she said. "I remember him telling someone he beat somebody for looking at him in the shower ... how he'd jumped on this guy and beat him, then went back inside and jumped on him again. He was just rambling on."
Hervey has been accused of violence behind bars before. Most recently, prison records show, he was disciplined in May for battery, aggravated battery and threats to inflict injury.
In April 2012, the state paid a $30,000 settlement to an inmate who was seriously injured when Hervey attacked him in his sleep in May 2011, stabbing him and beating him with a padlock tied to piece of string. Hakim Malik suffered serious injuries to an eye and his mouth.
The payment was to settle Malik's complaint that guards were at fault for allowing Hervey to sneak into Malik's unit despite earlier threats by Hervey.
Hervey was not prosecuted in that case but was punished administratively with a month in isolation and the loss of 55 days of good-time credit, which affected his parole.
Metro on 10/18/2016