A Pulaski County circuit judge declared a mistrial Friday in the attempted capital murder and kidnapping trial of a 30-year-old Sherwood man.
Joshua Matthew Padilla says he was forced into going along with an attack on a Greenbrier woman shot in the head and left for dead in a creek.
But Judge Herb Wright’s orders to arrest two Baptist Health Medical Center emergency room doctors remain in effect until the physicians, CW. Lyle and Zachary Gene Roe, appear before him.
Defense attorney Leo Monterrey asked Thursday to have the men taken into custody, saying they refused to obey subpoenas to come to court and testify.
The judge ended the trial Friday before Monterrey could begin his defense after prosecutors disclosed they hadn’t turned over evidence that could support Padilla’s account he had been coerced into cooperating with his co-defendants.
Padilla’s girlfriend, 30-yearold Samantha LeeAnn Mc-Clain of North Little Rock, and 37-year-old Nick Edward McDaniel, the North Little Rock man who instigated the attack on Shannon Lee Cox in June 2015, have pleaded guilty and been sentenced.
Prosecutors called Cox’s survival miraculous.
Deputy prosecutor Leigh Patterson told Wright on Friday she realized while preparing for the day’s proceedings she inadvertently failed to provide the defense a statement from McClain that could support Padilla’s claim he’d been bullied into going along with the attack on Cox, a 30-year-old married mother of two.
Monterrey asked for a mistrial, saying he couldn’t put on his defense without the material. A new trial hasn’t been scheduled.
Padilla, arrested two days after the attack, remains jailed.
Cox said she was beaten, bound, gagged and blindfolded at McDaniel’s home in North Little Rock, then driven to a bridge on Fortson Road, where McDaniel shot her in the head.
Her assailants refused what Cox considered her last request — an opportunity to write an apology letter to her daughters, Cox said Thursday.
McDaniel, who cried and said he loved her, had to pull the trigger several times before the gun would fire, Cox testified. When Cox fell to the road from being shot, McDaniel then clubbed her on the head.
Her tormentors threw her off the bridge into the creek, where she stayed until daybreak, partly to hide in case they returned but also because she couldn’t pull herself up the steep creek bank, she said.
She had been wearing a tube top and jeans, but said she had to discard her water-logged pants because they were hampering her from staying afloat.
After she got out of the creek, she picked up a sharp rock to defend herself in case her attackers returned, she said.
When she heard a car coming, Cox said, she hid in tall grass until she could see the vehicle didn’t contain her assailants.
She ran to the road, muddy, bloody and half-clothed, to flag down the car, which almost didn’t stop, she testified. The occupants called for help, then drove her to a gas station so she could meet an ambulance, Cox said.
Cox said McDaniel attacked her first, then Padilla and McClain arrived. What exactly set McDaniel off was in dispute at trial.
Cox told jurors she’d been staying with McDaniel for a couple of days during a drug-fueled fling at the North Chandler Street house where he lived with his parents, when he flew into a rage and began beating her.
The defense told jurors McDaniel was angry because he caught Cox stealing drugs and other things from him. She also told him she had hepatitis-C after they’d had unprotected sex, defense lawyers said.
Cox said McDaniel knew she had the virus, but had sex with her anyway. She denied stealing anything from him, but said she had taken back some pills he had stolen from her.
McDaniel and McClain pleaded guilty to attempted capital murder, kidnapping and first-degree battery. Mc-Daniel accepted a 40-year sentence. McClain received a 25-year sentence.