Little Rock police illegally searched a capital-murder suspect's cellphone, a Pulaski County circuit judge has ruled in an order barring prosecutors from using the defendant's phone records at trial.
Judge Leon Johnson on Monday sided with defense attorneys Bret Qualls and Lott Rolfe IV to suppress the records of 41-year-old Donald Lee Brown of Little Rock after hearing testimony that police examined the call history on Brown's flip phone immediately after his arrest.
The defense argued that the U.S. Supreme Court requires police to get a warrant for phone searches, and the judge agreed. Prosecutors can appeal the ruling, but they didn't indicate whether they would do so.
Brown is scheduled to stand trial in October.
Officer Steve Moore testified at Monday's hearing that he looked through Brown's phone for incriminating evidence. He said he found three phone calls placed to someone identified as "D" before the killing to be significant. Moore said he obtained Brown's phone records about a month later through court order.
Senior deputy prosecutor Leigh Patterson argued that Moore's search was permissible because Brown's phone was unlocked when Moore took it from Brown.
She also said the records should be allowed into evidence under the doctrine of "inevitable discovery" because police had sufficient evidence to obtain a warrant, so investigators would have discovered the calls anyway.
Brown was arrested in September, about five hours after Damon Kirk Wilkins was shot to death in front of Wilkins' home on Fairfield Drive. Two eyewitnesses have identified Brown as the shooter, police said.
Police had gone to the home about 46 minutes before the slaying, responding to an anonymous 911 call that Wilkins had pulled a gun on Courtney Brown, a nephew of the defendant, during an argument.
Courtney Brown was gone by the time police arrived, and officers saw Wilkins running away. Wilkins' girlfriend, Chamika Rogers, confirmed for police that the men had argued, but said no one had a gun. Police left because the men had fled, reports show.
After the slaying, Rogers told detectives that Wilkins and the Browns had argued because the men had shown up at the couple's home and Wilkins didn't know they were relatives of hers.
Once Wilkins learned who the men were, he apologized for the argument, which calmed Courtney Brown but did not placate Donald Brown, Rogers said.
Learning that police were coming, Wilkins ran because he was drunk, but returned soon after the officers left and again apologized, she told detectives.
Wilkins also approached Courtney Brown's mother to apologize, but was shot by Donald Brown and a second man who had just arrived, court files show.
Police were told that the second man provided the guns used to shoot Wilkins. Another witness described seeing Wilkins put his hands up when he saw their guns pointed at him.
Metro on 07/27/2017