A Pulaski County circuit judge on Monday reduced $200,000 bail to $35,000 for a 29-year-old Little Rock man accused of a wounding another man in a December 2015 shooting, after the defendant's attorney questioned whether the victim had mistakenly identified his client as the gunman.
Marcus Deshawn Simmons was arrested a week after Johnny Murry, 42, was shot outside the Oasis Hair Lounge barbershop at 7103 Colonel Glenn Road.
He faces charges of committing a terroristic act, first-degree battery and felon in possession of a firearm after Murry and another witness to the shooting picked him out of a photographic lineup. The charges together carry a potential life sentence.
Simmons has denied any involvement in the shooting, telling authorities that he was attending GoodFellas Barber College, 4306 Asher Ave., about 2 miles away, when Murry was shot. Police confirmed he was a student there.
Simmons said he'd left the school only briefly, about 2½ hours after the shooting, to get something to eat at Mama B's restaurant but had returned before leaving about 5 p.m.
Detective Aaron Oncen testified at Monday's bond hearing that Simmons became a suspect after Murry told him that he'd been shot by a man nicknamed Juvie, and a narcotics detective suggested Oncen look at a man named Marcus Simmons who frequented the College Station area and went by the Juvie nickname.
But defense attorney Bill James pointed out that Murry told police that he'd never seen Simmons before and questioned how the victim learned the nickname Juvie.
Murry said he'd been told the nickname from someone at the barbershop, Oncen testified, but the detective said he had not been able to find out who that person was.
James said Murry also reported that his assailant might have had a tear-drop tattoo, and James said that uncertain description about what should have been a defining identifying mark also showed that Murry could have identified the wrong man as the shooter.
Prison records show Simmons' tattoos include "homicide" and "murder mob," along with a gun and tombstones, but his photos do not show a tear tattoo.
Discrepancies in witness accounts of the shooting also indicated a potential false identification, James said. Murry and the other witness who picked Simmons out of a photographic lineup gave different descriptions of the truck the shooter was driving.
Murry said the truck was black, and the other witness said it was white. An uncooperative witness, who said he saw the shootings but refused to look at the suspect photos, said the truck was black, James said.
Simmons was on parole at the time of the shooting. His release was revoked after the shooting, and he requested bail reduction after being returned to parole this month for robbery, theft, drug trafficking, forgery and fleeing.
He did not testify at the hearing and had to use crutches to walk. Judge Herbert Wright also ordered Simmons to submit to electronic monitoring if he is able to post bail. Simmons was in the Pulaski County jail Monday night.
His most recent prison sentence was a three-year term for second-degree battery he received in September 2012 for, while in jail, repeatedly punching a female sheriff's deputy who had pepper-sprayed him for trying to leave his cell when she had denied him permission to leave.
Court records show that police had investigated Simmons in connection with two homicides, but murder charges were dropped both times.
Simmons was accused of participating in the July 2012 slaying of 31-year-old Terry London, a father of two who police say was mistakenly killed in a shootout between gang members feuding over marijuana.
Two other men, Brandon Eugene Reed and Richard Paul Swain, were wounded. Omar Jerome Griffis, 26, was convicted of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder for the shootings and sentenced to 45 years in prison at trial in June 2013.
But prosecutors dropped all charges against Simmons after Reed, their key witness, recanted his accusations.
Four months before London's slaying, prosecutors had dropped charges against Simmons and two other men, Gerrick Juwone Young, 27, and Raymond Lamont Moore Jr., 33.
The three had been accused of killing Larry Sims, 30, and wounding Elijah Deshaun Smith of North Little Rock and Edward Allen Davis of Little Rock during an August 2010 drug deal at the Baymont Inn & Suites on Mitchell Drive in Little Rock.
Prosecutors said they had to drop the case because key witnesses had stopped cooperating.
When Murry was shot in December, it was the day before he was due to be sentenced in Pulaski County Circuit Court on charges of residential burglary and aggravated assault after his June 2013 arrest as the gunman who broke down the Springwood Drive home of Kra Brooks of Little Rock while claiming to be a Little Rock police officer.
Police say a gun went off four or five times as Brooks and Murry fought over the weapon. Murry was arrested later that day at the hospital where he'd gone to see medical treatment.
Metro on 07/26/2016