A Little Rock teenager implicated in three shootings, one of them a robbery attempt and another that wounded an older man, must stand trial as an adult, a Pulaski County circuit judge ruled Friday.
Marquan Smith, 17, is charged as an adult with aggravated robbery, aggravated residential burglary, first-degree battery, committing a terroristic act, failure to appear and aggravated assault. The charges together could amount to a potential life sentence.
Prosecutors Michelle Quiller and Jennings Morgan urged Judge Leon Johnson to try Smith as an adult, showing the judge photographs of Smith found by police on social media that show him posing with guns.
Johnson ordered Smith to stand trial as an adult, citing the violent nature of the allegations and the way the teen disappeared from Little Rock, avoiding even his mother for weeks, until he was arrested in Indiana on a misdemeanor marijuana charge last March. Court files show Smith had been gone for at least six months.
At Friday's hearing, Michael Dickerson, 21, testified that Smith was one of three men who kicked in the back door of his home at 9810 Woodland Drive on Feb. 13, 2018. One of the three fired a shot at him before the three ran out of the house, Dickerson told the judge
A neighbor who saw the men fleeing directed police to a residence at 13424 Marietta Drive, the home of brothers Stanley Bush Jr. and Octavious Wesson, who were arrested with Smith.
The case against Bush, who was 14 at the time, was transferred to juvenile court in an arrangement that required him to plead guilty to residential burglary and testify against Smith. Wesson, 20, subsequently pleaded guilty to aggravated residential burglary in exchange for a 10-year prison sentence.
The judge also heard testimony from police detective Richard Hilgeman about how Smith came to be charged in a July 30, 2018, incident in Little Rock. Hilgeman told the judge that Deonte Jean Bousquet picked Smith out of a photo lineup as the assailant who threatened him and fired a gun.
Little Rock detective Irving Jackson told the judge how Smith and another teenager, Josiah Stewart of Little Rock, were charged in the Aug. 19 shooting of Marion Alfred Lovell, 65, at the Whispering Hills mobile home park at 11500 Chicot Road.
Lovell was shot in both thighs and once in his lower back during an altercation in front of his residence with some other tenants and visitors.
Stewart, 17, admitted to taking part in the shooting, pleading guilty to first-degree battery in January in exchange for a 10-year sentence.
Smith was implicated in the shooting by Stewart's mother, but she testified Friday that she couldn't remember whether Smith was around when Lovell was shot. Starmeca Wright, 39, complained to the judge that investigators had pressured her into incriminating Smith and her son. Asked whether she had lied to police, Wright responded she "probably" had lied "under pressure."
That statement, possibly a confession to a crime, prompted the judge to halt the hearing and summon an attorney to consult with Wright. After a whispered conference with Public Defender David Sudduth, Wright testified that whatever she told police had been the truth, although she cannot now remember what she said.
"I did not lie to the detective at that time," Wright told the judge. "It's been so long I really can't recall."
Questioned further by Quiller, the prosecutor, about whether Wright maintained she had lied to police or not, Wright, after further consultation from Sudduth, invoked her constitutional right against self-incrimination, declined to answer further questions and was allowed to leave the court.
Smith did not testify. His attorney, Willard Proctor, and mother, 37-year-old Sharon Owens, asked the judge to transfer the charges to juvenile court, where Smith is already facing felony charges of theft by receiving and fleeing.
They said since Smith, who turned 17 a month ago, has never been adjudicated as delinquent that he has never had a chance to benefit from any of the rehabilitative services offered in the juvenile justice system.
Metro on 07/20/2019