The two-day trial of a mentally ill North Little Rock man who robbed a Little Rock doughnut shop and a pawnshop at gunpoint a little more than a day apart ended with a hung jury Thursday.
The only real question for the jury was whether 20-year-old James Wiggins IV was insane at the time of the May 2017 robberies.
But the eight women and four men could not reach the required unanimous verdict, announcing to Pulaski County Circuit Judge Herb Wright that they were deadlocked 11-1 in favor of guilt on all charges, three counts of aggravated robbery and two counts of theft, after about 2½ hours of deliberation. Wright, at the request of the defense, called a mistrial. Prosecutors will announce plans next week about retrying Wiggins.
Both prosecution and defense agreed Wiggins suffers from bipolar-type schizoaffective disorder and that he was the gunman who held up the now-defunct Dunkin Donuts on Cantrell Road and Big Daddy's Pawnshop on West 12th Street.
Where they disagreed was whether Wiggins, who did not testify, was in his right mind when he robbed the stores.
Prosecutors relied on the findings of forensic psychologist James Michael Woods, whose court-ordered examination determined that Wiggins knew what he was doing when he robbed the stores. Woods also found that Wiggins was exaggerating his condition during the exam.
The defense countered Woods' testimony with the findings of their own experts, forensic psychologist James Moneypenny and Wiggins' psychiatrist Dr. Jim Aukstuolis, who concluded that Wiggins, who is also intellectually disabled, had been compelled to commit the crimes by voices in his head.
To prove insanity, attorneys Willard Proctor and Dominique King had to show jurors that Wiggins' mental illness either prevented him from knowing the difference between right and wrong or compelled him to commit the holdups. They called on jurors to return a verdict of innocent by reason of mental disease or defect.
"We're not going to insult your intelligence," King said in closing statements. "You saw James Wiggins on the [surveillance] video."
She asked jurors not to judge Wiggins solely by those crimes but also take into account his lifelong struggle with mental illness, episodes of mania and delusion described by his family and doctors. He hadn't taken his medication in at least four months at the time, and his mother reported seeing him acting delusional at the time, King said.
Prosecutors Robbie Jones and Christy Bjornson told jurors that some of the best evidence that Wiggins was in his right mind was the surveillance videos from the robberies. Both show a robber acting purposely and deliberately, they said, calling on jurors to think about the planning that went into the crimes.
Wiggins had to come up with a gun, and in the Big Daddy holdup, he also walked in with a duffle bag that he made victims Russell "Rusty" Roberts and Ronnie Easley fill with 13 guns.
"You saw it," Bjornson said in her closing statement, mimicking holding a gun in her hand. "He knew what he wanted and he went in there and got it. He did whatever he needed to do to get it."
Only one of the weapons was recovered, and police found it with 42-year-old Machita "Frog" Mitchell, a gang member and murder suspect.
Jones told jurors that while Wiggins has been mentally ill for most of his life, there is no report, even from his own family, of him being compelled to act criminally until the robberies.
Prosecutors urged jurors not to forget the victims who were terrorized by Wiggins. Wendy Shepherd, the Dunkin Donuts clerk, was so scared that she jumped through the restaurant's drive-through window into the car of a customer who drove her away and called 911. Big Daddy owner William Landers saw Wiggins pointing the gun at his friends.
Wiggins is free on bond, but a verdict would have likely required him to be incarcerated, either in prison if found guilty or in the Arkansas State Hospital if found innocent by mental disease or defect.
Court records show a Pulaski County jury has not acquitted a defendant on an insanity defense in 25 years.
In March 1994, jurors found pharmacist William Bruce Leasure, then 39, who had tried to burn down a state regulator's drug store, innocent by reason of mental disease or defect.
He was charged with burglary and attempted arson after breaking into the store at 1801 S. Broadway St. in Little Rock and dousing it with gasoline in July 1993. Police, responding to an alarm, found Leasure walking away from the store.
A psychiatrist and a psychologist testified that Leasure was suffering from a "delusional paranoid disorder" and manic depression.
Leasure, who was also a lawyer, had been under investigation over his record-keeping practices at his own pharmacy.
Leasure, represented at trial by attorney Chip Welch, now a Pulaski County Circuit judge, had told friends and co-workers in the weeks before the break-in that secret agents had been spying on him with cameras and listening devices in his store.
Following the jury's verdict, Leasure was committed to state custody for treatment but released after five years.
He was able to return to work as an attorney, first as a public defender in his native Kentucky, then returning to Little Rock. He also resumed work as a pharmacist and was employed with Jefferson Regional Medical Center in Pine Bluff when he died at age 53 in November 2007 from complications of a stroke he suffered about five months earlier.
Metro on 07/22/2019