A 34-year-old Little Rock man who fatally shot a man in the back and then threw away the gun was cleared of wrongdoing Wednesday by a Pulaski County jury.
Charles Anthony O'Neal testified he opened fire only because he thought Owen Damar Harvey, 29, of Jacksonville was pulling a gun on him during an April 2015 late-night encounter in front of O'Neal's West 24th Street home across from Curran Conway Field.
The seven men and five women on the jury deliberated about an hour and 20 minutes to acquit O'Neal of first-degree murder after a two-day trial before Circuit Judge Barry Sims. The verdict sent Harvey's mother, Beverly Wilson, into a screaming fit outside the second-floor courtroom.
In closing arguments, defense attorney Ron Davis told jurors that Arkansas law gives special protections to people to use deadly force to protect themselves when they are at home.
[HOMICIDE MAP: Interactive map of Little Rock’s 2015 killings]
"Is it better to be judged by 12 fair-minded people or carried by six of your friends?" Davis said. "In this country, you can use a firearm to defend yourself, and if you're in your home, you don't have to run away."
Harvey had involved himself in a feud about child support between his girlfriend and O'Neal, Davis said.
The woman, Abigail Ransom, had children with both men. O'Neal had already faced Ransom and Harvey down in his front yard in a separate encounter a week before the shooting.
O'Neal showed them he was armed in that earlier encounter when he felt threatened by Ransom. Jurors got to see some and hear all of that incident on a cellphone video Davis provided that had been recorded by a friend of O'Neal's.
The day of the slaying, Easter 2015, Ransom first turned up alone at O'Neal's home, calling him a "deadbeat" for not doing enough to financially support their son. Police ran her off, but she returned three hours later with Harvey, Davis said.
O'Neal was asleep when the couple showed up so Ransom could resume haranguing him for money to care for their 4-month-old son, the attorney told jurors.
"Charles O'Neal was at home minding his own business," Davis said in his closing arguments. "He [Harvey] went to another man's house ... raising all kinds of Cain for a child that wasn't his."
With the ballistic evidence showing only one gun was fired -- the same weapon that killed Harvey -- prosecutors contended that the younger man was unarmed.
Whether Harvey had a gun did not matter, Davis told jurors. For them to consider O'Neal's actions to be justified under the law, jurors had only to believe that O'Neal genuinely thought his life was in danger and responded to that threat with the appropriate amount of force, he said.
O'Neal did not have to risk being shot before he could legally act to protect himself, the attorney told jurors.
"You don't have to wait to get shot," Davis said.
O'Neal told jurors that he started shooting when Harvey appeared to pull something from behind his back then started walking toward him with his right arm outstretched. He said he never saw the man with a gun.
"He was reaching behind his back ... to me, that's like you have a weapon," he said, shaping his fingers into a pistol. "He's got his hand like he's got a gun. For me to wait and see, there's time for me to get shot."
O'Neal could not explain how Harvey ended up shot in the back, saying he guessed the man had spun around just as he started shooting him.
"There's a possibility he turned around and started to run. That's what I would do," O'Neal told jurors. "I pulled the trigger until his arm went down."
O'Neal left the home but returned shortly after police arrived. He told jurors he'd driven away in adrenalin-induced "panic mode" but calmed down during the drive. He said he'd thrown the gun out of his car into some nearby woods before returning because he didn't want to drive up on police with a weapon on him.
"When you're in a situation like that, you've got to get away," he told jurors. "I was forced into a bad situation, and that gun would've made it worse."
The weapon was never found, and O'Neal said police never asked him where he threw it.
One bullet went through Harvey's right buttock and exited his groin, while the second went through his right arm, shattering his upper arm bone.
The killing shot went into his back just below his left shoulder blade and traveled up through his body to lodge in his neck, puncturing a lung, breaking ribs and ripping his jugular vein, filling his chest with blood.
Prosecutors Kelly Ward and Jill Kamps argued that the steep trajectory through Harvey's body proved the man was not just facing away from O'Neal, but also crouched over, likely because of the pain of his other wounds.
In closing arguments, Kamps acknowledged that Ransom, who testified for the prosecution, might have come off as abrasive, abusive and vulgar during the trial. But she asked jurors not to be swayed by any distaste they might have for Ransom and focus on the way O'Neal shot and killed Harvey.
"You may not like Abigail Ransom. You may not like how she acted ... the things that she said. But you don't have to," Kamps told jurors. "Whether you like how Abigail handled this situation has nothing to do with Charles O'Neal shooting Owen Harvey three times in the back."
Metro on 11/02/2017