The attorney for a teenager charged in the slaying of a Conway couple more than two years ago is trying to get a circuit judge to recuse from the case.
Circuit Judge Troy Braswell has presided over the capital-murder case of Hunter Drexler, 19, of Clinton since shortly after Drexler was one of four teenagers charged in the July 2015 shooting deaths of Robert and Patricia Cogdell, both 66.
Defense attorney Patrick Benca's recusal efforts became public after the state attorney general's office filed a response objecting to a defense motion that referred to the recusal issue and that was filed in the Arkansas Court of Appeals. The appeals court clerk's office did not immediately seal that response as it had most other documents in the case.
The response, filed late Wednesday, did not say why Benca wants Braswell off the case. Rather than unseal the motion, the clerk's office later sealed the response and another filing by Benca after the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette asked about the matter Thursday.
Benca declined to comment Thursday.
In February, Braswell, a former deputy prosecutor, denied Drexler's motion to have the case transferred from Faulkner County Circuit Court to juvenile court. Drexler is challenging that decision in the state appeals court.
Benca has asked the higher court to stay, or temporarily stop, the briefing schedule on the juvenile-court issue and send the case back to circuit court for an evidentiary hearing and other relief, including bail, according to the court docket and the attorney general's response. Drexler is jailed without bail.
Filed by Senior Assistant Attorney General David Raupp, the response makes it clear that Benca has previously and unsuccessfully asked Braswell to recuse and now wants to ask again.
Raupp wrote that "the review of recusal decisions by lower courts are ordinarily taken up on appeal."
But Benca contends "that the denial of his recusal motion" is not allowed in a pretrial appeal challenging another specific issue -- the adult versus juvenile status of this case, Raupp added.
"As with his bond-reconsideration request, the appellant [Drexler through Benca] has failed to demonstrate his remand request is anything more than an effort to litigate his prosecution piecemeal before the appellate courts beyond the" pretrial appeal already pending, Raupp wrote.
Even though Drexler's case is sealed on the appeal level, most of it is open to the public on the circuit court level through an online court website. Still, there is no public record of a recusal motion or ruling in Braswell's court. A few lower court elements of Drexler's case, including but not necessarily limited to juvenile matters, are sealed.
An employee in the appeals court clerk's office said Thursday that the court normally does not seal cases such as Drexler's where defendants are asking to have their cases moved to juvenile court. Sometimes, though, as in Drexler's case, some elements were sealed in the lower court.
Because it's harder for the appeals clerk to know details of so many cases from around the state, it tends to seal the entire case in such matters. The employee said, however, that Benca could legally release the motion if he chose.
Benca would not release the motion. The appeals court had not ruled on it as of late Thursday.
Drexler is charged with two counts each of capital murder, abuse of a corpse, aggravated robbery and theft of property by threat.
State Desk on 08/25/2017