A 30-year-old Little Rock man was sentenced to nine years in prison on Wednesday for stabbing a man at a southwest convenience store.
But the Pulaski County jury that convicted Demarcus Dewayne Sanders of second-degree battery also cleared him of aggravated robbery after he explained he had been trying to collect a drug debt from 40-year-old Earnest Joseph Tyler when things got out of hand at the Exxon store at 7700 Scott Hamilton Drive.
The battery charge carried a maximum of 12 years in prison for repeat offenders like Sanders while the robbery charge has a 10-year minimum sentence.
The jury verdict ended the two-day trial before Circuit Judge Barry Sims. Sanders is also scheduled to stand trial in August on aggravated robbery and commercial burglary charges related to a January 2018 theft from the Walmart at 19301 Cantrell Road.
Testifying about his July 31 encounter with Tyler, Sanders said all he wanted was what the man owed him, $50 from a drug deal a week or so earlier.
"I sold him some merchandise. He gave me half in [$50] cash and the other [half] in some kind of fake drugs," Sanders said. "I just went in to confront him, and it escalated."
Defense attorneys Colleen Barnhill and Joe Tobler disputed that Sanders' injury was serious enough to warrant a felony conviction, pointing out that there's no evidence that Sanders received any medical treatment for the cut to his right upper arm beyond the first-aid he got from police and paramedics.
"I did stab him," Sanders said, telling jurors that he and Tyler had been exchanging death threats in the days leading up to the incident. "I wanted my money for the simple fact of respect. I felt disrespected and taken advantage of."
Sanders said Tyler threw some money at him during their confrontation, but it wasn't enough to pay what he owed. Tyler also offered him some pills during the encounter, but Sanders said he turned them down because he doesn't use pills.
Tyler did not testify. The defense said prosecutors didn't call him as a witness because he had lied about how he knew Sanders.
Evidence about Tyler's injuries came from Nicholas Maier, the police officer that Tyler flagged down to report the attack, and Monica Roy, the store clerk who witnessed the incident.
The men argued and fought across the store, Roy told jurors, who also watched a security video of the incident.
Sanders was armed with a kitchen knife, she said, and approached Tyler, a regular customer, sternly asking for "his" money.
Roy, 36, told jurors she did not see Tyler get stabbed, but saw the cut on his arm and had to clean up the aftermath.
"There was blood everywhere," she said.
Deputy prosecutors Reese Lancaster and Anna Catherine Cargile told jurors that everything Sanders admitted to, demanding money -- and taking it -- while armed with a deadly weapon adds up to the crime of aggravated robbery.
By taking the stand, Sanders had to acknowledge his own criminal history. He's been either on probation or parole since April 2007, with convictions for attempted residential burglary, commercial burglary, possession of firearms by certain persons, failure to appear and drug trafficking.
Sanders' lawyers called Tyler a drug dealer, and court records show he's currently on parole on an 18-year prison sentence he received in 2012 for drug dealing.
Tyler has also been the victim of crime before. In September 2011, he was robbed of his cash and cellphone at gunpoint at Pine Cone Drive and Hilaro Springs Road by three people. He was able to identify one of the robbers as Eugene Cardell Bibbs, a man he knew from the neighborhood. Bibbs, now 25, pleaded guilty to robbery in October 2012 in exchange for a 20-year sentence.
Metro on 05/24/2019