A Little Rock man charged with witness bribery will remain jailed until trial, a Pulaski County circuit judge has ruled after hearing recordings of jailhouse phone calls that prosecutors say show the defendant discussing, with his wife and father, paying off a witness.
One of the conversations was also purported to be between the accused, Machita Decosta Mitchell Jr., and the witness, Tyrone Nutt, about what Nutt should say to prosecutors to get them to drop terroristic-threatening charges against Mitchell.
"A flagrant attempt" to subvert the judicial system is how Judge Chris Piazza described what he had heard, a 7 ½-minute call involving Mitchell, Dedra Mitchell and Nutt and a nearly three-minute recording between Mitchell and his father, Machita Mitchell Sr., 62. Both recordings were made Sept. 5 at the Pulaski County jail.
The judge said during a hearing Thursday that he was particularly struck by the conversation between father and son when the younger Mitchell castigates his father for giving money to Nutt before the witness had met with prosecutors.
"It's painfully obvious there was some association between the payment of money and the attempt to change testimony," the judge said.
The recordings also capture the defendant, who prosecutors say is a member of the Wolfe Street Crips gang, talking about the prosecutor, Amanda Fields, by name, and in one exchange with Nutt, one of the men refers to her as a "b***h."
"The recordings detail exactly what the truth is -- someone was trying to bribe a witness," Fields told the judge.
The recordings also show that Mitchell has violated a court order barring him from having any contact with Nutt, an order that has been effect since his arrest in February, she said.
Mitchell is accused of threatening to shoot Nutt, 48, while armed with a rifle.
Defense attorney Cara Boyd Connors acknowledged that the recordings capture a discussion about an exchange of money.
But she argued that authorities had taken the conversations out of context by not considering that Nutt and Mitchell Sr. have been friends for more than 20 years. There's no overt discussion of anyone paying Nutt to get him to stop cooperating with authorities, she said.
A more reasonable interpretation of the recordings is that the senior Mitchell was helping pay a utility bill, she said.
"This is an exchange between two old family friends about paying the light bill," Boyd Connors said.
Co-counsel Maximillan Sprinkle further argued that the recordings were not sufficient reason for the judge to deny Mitchell a "reasonable" bail.
"It could look bad," he said. "But none of it is anything the court can consider in setting bail."
Bail is supposed to serve only as a financial guarantee that the defendant will show up for his court hearings after being released from jail, he said.
Bail cannot be used punitively, and all criminal defendants, aside from the ones charged with capital murder, are constitutionally entitled to have bail, Sprinkle told the judge.
Piazza previously had declined to release Mitchell, who has served federal time for cocaine trafficking, on bail in August, but said he would reconsider if prosecutors did not bring him to trial within a month.
But the discovery of the recordings by sheriff's deputies in early September led prosecutors to have Mitchell's trial delayed so they could have time to study the conversations to see if they could be used as evidence. Mitchell is now scheduled to stand trial in November.
The recordings also led deputies to arrest four people on bribery charges: Mitchell, his father, his wife, Dedra, and a friend, 21-year-old Kenwad Demarcus Sherrod. Father and son remain jailed. Sherrod was released Wednesday night and was at the courthouse Sept. 28 but did not attend the hearing that day.
Sheriff's investigator Chris Schmeckenbecher told the judge he started monitoring Mitchell's phone calls in August after getting a tip the defendant was up to something. He said he's been listening to Mitchell's phone conversations ever since and has collected 100 recordings.
"He makes many calls," the deputy testified, estimating as many as 20 per day. Schmeckenbecher said he's reviewed maybe 25 percent of Mitchell's calls.
All calls from the jail-provided phones play a prerecorded message for the inmates and the call recipients notifying them that the conversations are being recorded and monitored, Schmeckenbecher testified.
Mitchell had been released on bail following his February arrest. Five months later, he was arrested again, this time at his home after a police raid turned up 84 pounds of marijuana, two guns -- one of which was hidden in couch cushions -- and $23,700 in a safe in the residence.
Metro on 10/03/2017