A Maumelle man who told a Pulaski County jury that his own repeated confessions to a 2011 double-homicide were drug-addled ravings that could not be believed was sentenced to 45 years in prison on Friday.
Jurors took about 31/2 hours Thursday to convict 28-year-old Brandon Ulysses Westbrook on two counts of first-degree murder and a single charge of attempted first-degree murder for the February 2011 slayings in Little Rock of 41-year-old Sterling Lee Bolden and 55-year-old Robert Tilton "Popcorn" McDonald in McDonald's Summit Street home.
McDonald's girlfriend, Rose Hill, was also wounded twice as she tried to hide behind a bed. The men were shot at close range while Hill was wounded in the left arm and hand.
The 11 men and single woman of the panel deliberated about an hour on Friday before delivering their sentencing recommendation to Circuit Judge Leon Johnson. Westbrook will have to serve 311/2 years before he is eligible for parole.
In closing arguments Thursday, defense attorney Lou Marczuk said jurors should not believe the claims Westbrook had purportedly made because the man had been out of his mind on drugs. Westbrook doesn't remember anything he said that day.
"This is a false confession made by a man who was on sherm," Marczuk said, using the street name for PCP-laced marijuana. "False confessions are not uncommon. Is this enough to tie this man to these three terrible crimes?"
Prosecutors had no physical evidence linking Westbrook to the shootings, but they said he knew details of the crime that only the killer could know, such as how two guns were used in the shootings and what Hill was doing when she was shot.
Deputy prosecutor Hugh Finkelstein said Westbrook was trying to sell jurors on "magically" induced "amnesia" because blood testing showed he had no drugs in his system when he was admitting to the killings in encounters with police and neighbors.
"He's admitted to it many, many times and now he's trying to take it all back," the prosecutor said in his closing.
Westbrook's aunt, Joice Ann Dutcher, testified that she was with Westbrook on Gaines Street where his pickup had broken down at the time of the killing. His mother, Andrea Madden, told jurors that whatever Westbrook knew about the shootings came from "street talk" she had picked up and relayed to him.
Chief deputy prosecutor John Johnson called the women liars with good intentions.
"Why would these people who care about him lie?" the prosecutor asked jurors. "Because they know he's guilty."
Westbrook testified for about 15 minutes Thursday, telling jurors he consumed PCP-laced marijuana two days before he started telling people he'd done the shootings.
"It tasted funny" and caused him to start "acting crazy," Westbrook testified.
He said he didn't remember much about that day and nothing of what he said or whom he talked to. But in reviewing police video and witness statements, Westbrook said, he believed he was only repeating gossip from the streets.
"I was just hollering out of the side of my neck," Westbrook told jurors. "I did not shoot Mr. Bolden. I did not shoot Mr. McDonald. I did not shoot Ms. Hill."
Westbrook was arrested a week after the slayings when he caused a disturbance at the Little Rock hospital where his family had taken him because he'd been acting erratically. According to testimony, Westbrook told one officer he'd killed two men while a second officer overheard him admit to his mother that he was responsible for their killings.
But Westbrook had already come to the attention of police that same day after an encounter with a neighbor, Ronald McCoy.
McCoy, a part-time music producer, told jurors that Westbrook was only an acquaintance he had met the week before, when he showed up at McCoy's home and wanted to talk about music.
Westbrook did most of the talking, McCoy said, telling jurors that the encounter started out uncomfortable but grew alarming when Westbrook told him he had killed three people -- two men and a woman. Westbrook said one of the men was named Popcorn and that he had killed the people at a house on Summit, McCoy testified.
"He actually spoke about killing some persons," McCoy told jurors. "I was trying to defuse the situation and trying to get him out of the house."
McCoy's wife, Shollenna McCoy, said she was in the kitchen making breakfast but could hear Westbrook. She said what he was saying about murder and killing was so disturbing that she prepared herself to come to her husband's rescue.
"He said he had killed three people. He said it was two guys and a girl ... on Summit," Shollenna McCoy told jurors. "I had a frying pan in one hand and a knife in the other, just in case."
Robert McCoy said he talked Westbrook into leaving but the man returned a few minutes later and began beating on the couple's door. The couple reported the incident to police, then, still fearful, spent the night at a hotel.
Hill, the shooting survivor, testified she was awakened from her sleep in the midafternoon by McDonald speaking to someone, then heard the shots. His last words were "Why are you doing this to me?" she told jurors.
She said McDonald was moving backward into the room as the shots were fired. She said she rolled off the bed and onto the floor, pulling the sheet over her face, when she was shot. Hill said she played dead until police, alerted by a visitor who found the dead men, arrived.
"I heard the pow, pow, pow," she said. "I rised up and I could see the [muzzle] fire. I'm going oh my God and that's when Popcorn hit the floor," she said. "I just laid there and laid there and laid there. I heard Popcorn cough twice and I just laid there."
In a video-recorded interview with police that was not shown to jurors, Westbrook recounted the shootings for detectives, telling them he was impressed with the fortitude Hill displayed when she was shot. The 46-minute recording was played in court at an earlier hearing.
"She took that s*** like a G [gangster]," he said.
In the recording, he says he shot the men, one of whom he had known for a long time but only as Popcorn while the second was a stranger. He said he was there to get crack cocaine from McDonald, but came to believe the men were going to kill him so he started shooting.
Westbrook said he wasn't sure why he felt like he had to kill the men. He told detectives he didn't take any money from the victims.
"Robbing was not the issue," he said. "I knew I was going to shoot them when I went in."
Westbrook is a son of former Pulaski County sheriff's Deputy Eddie Madden who was fired from the department in 1995 after 19 years, after he was found inside an illegal gambling and drinking club in Jacksonville during a raid by state and local authorities. Madden died in 2012.
Metro on 07/26/2014