A Pulaski County jury deliberated about 90 minutes Thursday to clear a 19-year-old Pine Bluff man accused in a February 2017 shooting that killed a man and wounded three others.
Little Rock police described the case as a robbery and named Terrance Jermaine Reynolds as the killer.
Charged with capital murder, aggravated robbery and first-degree battery, a guilty verdict would have sent Reynolds to prison for the rest of his life. He turned down a plea deal from prosecutors that would have given him a 40-year sentence for first-degree murder.
He's been jailed since his arrest a week after the shooting that killed Alexander Powell "Alec" Reed at the Eagle Hill apartments on Par Drive. Three others in the apartment were wounded.
Authorities said Reed had been set up to be robbed by three Pine Bluff men who acted like they wanted to buy a $250 ounce of marijuana from him. Reed had taken them to the apartments to procure the marijuana.
The case was built chiefly on the eyewitness testimony of two of Reed's friends, Bobby Lane Carroll and Rachael Benson, and Alvin Chaffin Jr., Reynolds' 22-year-old co-defendant.
Benson, who was shot in the arm, identified Reynolds as one of two strangers who entered the apartment that night, while Carroll, who was in the apartment parking lot, tentatively identified him as one of the men involved.
Defense attorney Gene McKissic launched a two-prong attack on the evidence. He presented alibi witnesses, who said they were with Reynolds in Pine Bluff, and he argued that Chaffin could not be trusted.
With no physical evidence connecting Reynolds to the killing, McKissic told jurors that authorities were too quick to believe what Chaffin had told them.
Chaffin claimed Reynolds was the killer, testifying that he saw Reynolds shoot Reed point-blank in the head, but McKissic said Chaffin, the only one linked to the murder by DNA, could be the real killer.
Chaffin was wounded in the shooting, and his blood was found outside the apartment. He was the first to be arrested after police found him in a hospital being treated for a hand wound the night of the slaying. He cooperated with police almost immediately, naming Reynolds and Reynolds' older brother as the other two men involved.
"Chaffin lied. He lied about a lot of stuff," said McKissic, who pounded his chest at times during closing statements. "What proof do they have besides what Chaffin says? Nothing!"
He also questioned whether the shooting was actually a robbery attempt, as Chaffin claimed, or something else. Nothing was reported stolen, and there's no evidence anyone even tried to steal anything, McKissic said.
"Whatever went down, it wasn't a robbery," he said. "If there's no aggravated robbery ... there is no capital murder."
Prosecutors Amanda Fields and Michael Wright urged jurors to use their common sense to see how each piece of evidence -- witness accounts, medical testimony and bullet shell casings brought together by "good solid police work" -- taken together implicate Reynolds.
"This is not a television show," Wright said in his closing statement. "We don't have the magic smoking gun. I wish we did. But that's not how real life works. This case is all about corroboration."
The investigation brought together three "random" people -- Benson, Carroll and Chaffin who would have otherwise never met, Fields said. But their descriptions of what happened, where it happened and how it happened are each corroborated by other evidence, she said.
For example, Fields said, the day Chaffin was arrested, he told police that Reynolds put his gun against Reed's head to kill him. And now, the medical examiner has shown jurors the autopsy photos that prove Reed was shot at close range, she said.
"How is Alvin going to know all of this -- that all of this is going to be backed up -- and not be telling the truth?" she said.
Reynolds did not testify. The brothers' parents, Isaac and Amanda Reynolds, along with Asia Foster, the girlfriend of Reynolds' brother, Kevonta Reynolds, told jurors the men were with them at the Reynolds home in Pine Bluff when Reed was killed in Little Rock.
Isaac Reynolds and Foster described seeing Terrance Reynolds using a computer in his bedroom. Foster, who had just gotten off work, said Kevonta Reynolds fixed her some dinner and they watched TV together.
A friend of the brothers, Mike Iverson of Pine Bluff, said they were with him earlier that same evening, playing video games at his home. He told jurors he borrowed Kevonta Reynolds' car to drive to Little Rock to return a borrowed game to a friend, but returned to Pine Bluff that same night and didn't return the car for another day.
The jury's verdict does not mean immediate freedom for Reynolds. He has to return to Jefferson County to face probation revocation proceedings. He had been on probation about five months on felony gun and misdemeanor theft convictions, related to arrests at ages 16 and 17, when he was charged in the slaying.
Thursday's proceedings ended with the presiding judge, Steven Porch of Monticello, holding McKissic in contempt and fining him $500 for a disparaging statement he made in front of the jury implying an evidentiary ruling by the judge was nonsensical.
Porch said he'd allowed McKissic to get by with other disrespectful remarks during the trial, but could not let an insult to the court made in front of the jury go unpunished.
McKissic apologized, telling the judge he might sometimes act "a little uncouth" during the "heat of battle" while advocating for his client, but that he intended no personal insult.
Metro on 04/13/2018