A man who concluded his arson trial Wednesday with an angry and profane rant was sentenced to 48 years in prison for setting his Little Rock hotel room on fire more than two years ago.
Adam Blake Kleier will not be able to qualify for early release because of his criminal history.
The 38-year-old defendant has regularly been disruptive in court -- cursing, yelling and launching into rambling, angry tirades -- during the 31 months it has taken his case to go to trial.
Pulaski County Circuit Judge Leon Johnson warned Kleier ahead of trial Wednesday morning that he'd be removed from the court at the first outburst and put in a holding cell where he would only be able to listen to the proceedings.
As Kleier waited for jurors to enter the court Wednesday, he delivered a rambling, fast-paced monologue that referred to football, tennis, Beyonce Knowles, Chelsea Clinton and some of the evidence against him, including a complaint that prosecutors had not dismissed the arson charge.
Except for pounding his fist on the table and a brief outburst apparently directed at the judge as the jury was being brought in, Kleier quieted down.
But a couple of hours later, just as his lawyers were about to cross-examine the fire marshal who investigated the fire, the judge suddenly excused the jurors and called the attorneys to the bench, apparently concerned by how Kleier was slumped in his chair with his eyes closed.
His attorneys, Lou Marczuk and David Sudduth, leaned over him, whispering to him, with Sudduth shaking his arm and calling his name.
Jurors were brought back into court after Sudduth told the judge that Kleier was awake and had chosen to sit that way in his chair. He said Kleier had been alert and engaged throughout the proceeding.
Kleier had been renting Room 529 at the LaQuinta Inn & Suites on South Broadway for about a week when the fire broke out in his room. Deputy prosecutor Cole Lorigan said the blaze caused about $48,000 in heat, smoke and water damage. The mattress and bedding had been set on fire but the flames were extinguished by the hotel sprinkler system before firefighters arrived.
Finding a suspect was easy for fire investigators, Lorigan said. The first hotel staff member to reach the room, housekeeping supervisor Marrie Thomas, testified that she was nearly knocked down by a man who ran out of the room wearing only underwear and a necktie. A wallet with Kleier's driver's license and bank card were found in the pocket of a pinstriped suit in the room.
Capt. John Hogue, the fire marshal who investigated the blaze, said he found Kleier, wearing only underwear, sitting in the hotel lobby. Hogue, who'd found a cigarette lighter in the room, said that, when he asked Kleier if he knew how the fire started, the man told him, "I was playing with a lighter and I decided to start burning s***."
Fire Capt. Harold Brown testified that the hotel sprinklers are designed to activate when temperatures in the room reach 160 to 170 degrees. A burning bed would take about three to five minutes to generate that much heat, he said.
The eight women and four men of the jury deliberated about 44 minutes to find Kleier guilty as charged. Told that his criminal record includes a 2007 conviction in Tennessee for attempted murder, jurors took about 13 minutes to decide on a 48-year prison term, after which Kleier went into a raging tirade that continued even as bailiffs restrained him.
Court records alternately describe Kleier as homeless and a Little Rock resident who lived in Alexander 15 years ago. He had been living in Nashville, Tenn., before the Sept. 17, 2015, hotel fire.
Most of the court proceedings since his arrest have been devoted to resolving questions about his sanity.
An examination by state doctors, conducted at the request of his lawyers, found in December 2015 that Kleier was suffering from symptoms, including psychosis, of possible schizophrenia. He was committed to the State Hospital for treatment and examination to determine whether he would ever be fit for trial.
In a November 2016 report to the judge, doctors concluded that Kleier was not mentally ill, just deeply anti-social, and pronounced him competent for trial, court filings show. His attorneys accepted those findings last May after studying the report, court filings show.
Metro on 04/06/2018