Judge to allow audiotape at trial

On it, double-homicide suspect says gun used in crime is his

A Pulaski County circuit judge on Friday paved the way for a jury to hear a double-homicide suspect claim ownership of a pistol that police say was used in the April 2009 slayings.

Justin Omar Watson, 25, of Jacksonville, represented by attorney Tom Devine, challenged the legality of the police interview - conducted the same day Anthony Ray Jackson Jr., 16, and Kenneth Byron Marion, 57, were found shot to death in Little Rock - in which Watson said he had bought the gun earlier in the day.

Devine disputed that his client could deliberately have waived his constitutional rights to submit to police questioning since Watson claimed to be intoxicated when he was interviewed. Devine sought to have the recording barred from Watson’s trial next month.

But Judge Barry Sims rejected Devine’s challengeafter senior deputy prosecutor Marianne Satterfield played the 16-minute audio recording during Friday’s hearing, and Michael Gibbons, the North Little Rock detective who conducted the interview, said Watson didn’t appear drunk. Gibbons testified that he questioned Watson closely about his drinking but that the defendant did not appear impaired. Gibbons also noted that Watson had been in custody about five hours before he was interrogated.

Watson wasn’t a homicide suspect when Gibbons questioned him in April 2009.He was accused of burglarizing a car with a second man, 24-year-old Stephan Rashad Luckadue of Little Rock, near North Little Rock’s Indian Hills Elementary School.

Luckadue tried to run over an off-duty Little Rock police officer who had confronted the men about the breakin. Luckadue pleaded guilty to attempted murder five months later in exchange for a 30-year prison sentence, whileWatson received eight years in prison in October 2009 for theft and breaking and entering. As part of Watson’s plea deal, prosecutors dropped a felon in possession of a firearm charge after a .40-caliber pistol was found in Luckadue’s car.

Testing on that gun wasn’t completed until after the men had made their pleas, Satterfield said. Ballistics showed it was one of two guns used to kill Jackson and Marion.

The pair was found dead in a red Pontiac Sunfire at 22nd and Valentine streets in Little Rock about seven hours before Luckadue had tried to run over the police officer. They had been shot with a .380-caliber gun and a .40-caliber gun during a drug deal, theprosecutor said.

In his statement about the break-in, Watson at first wouldn’t answer questions about the pistol until Gibbons asked him whether his fingerprints would be found on the gun.

“I touched a gun that was in the car,” Watson said, saying he had bought it for $75 earlier in the day from “some dude” on John Barrow Road in Little Rock. “He just asked me, ‘I got a clean gun for sale, you want to buy one?’”

The defendants were arrested in prison in June 2010 on two counts each of first-degree murder. Luckadue has turned state’s evidence, promising to testify against Watson in exchange for a 25-year prison sentence that will run concurrently with his attempted murder sentence, Devine told the judge. Watson is scheduled to stand trial next month.

Devine also questioned why only the audio portion of the interview was recorded. North Little Rock police only videotaped homicide defendants in 2009, but have since amended that policy to require videotaping of all defendants in response to changes in the Rules of Criminal Procedure, Gibbons testified.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 16 on 02/10/2013

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