FAYETTEVILLE -- A Lowell man accused of tackling, beating and dragging a woman from the Lake Fayetteville trail was found guilty of kidnapping Friday and sentenced to 30 years in state prison.
Richard Leroy Turner, 34, was convicted in the attack of April Wallace, 28, on a Sunday afternoon in September 2015. The sentence is the maximum time allowed under state law for kidnapping by a habitual offender.
Legal lingo
Kidnapping
A person commits the offense of kidnapping if, without consent, the person restrains another person so as to interfere substantially with the other person’s liberty with the purpose of inflicting physical injury upon the person, terrorizing the person or several other purposes.
Source: Arkansas Code 5-11-102
Turner's attorneys said he planned to appeal the conviction. Turner's habitual offender designation stems from a 2003 conviction in the rape of a 13-year-old girl and a 2014 conviction for failure to register as a sex offender.
Washington County prosecutors said police investigators connected Turner to the attack with DNA evidence at the scene and Wallace's description and memory of her attacker. Turner's attorneys pointed to inconsistencies between witness descriptions and Turner's claim he was innocent.
"We're so grateful to the jury," said Terra Stephenson, senior deputy prosecutor. "It's clear they really believed April."
Turner was charged with kidnapping and aggravated assault, but the prosecution didn't pursue the assault charge as previous reports on the trial said. Stephenson on Friday said she and Brian Lamb, deputy prosecutor, felt most strongly about the kidnapping charge.
Wallace, who's a reporter for the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, testified she was jogging around the lake with earbuds in her ears when she heard steps quickly coming behind her. A man wrapped his arm around her neck to bring her to the ground, punching her repeatedly in the face and alternating between squeezing her throat and placing a hand over her mouth to stop her screaming.
The attacker then dragged Wallace far enough off the trail that she couldn't see it clearly. He released her and said he was protecting her from black people with guns who were hiding in the woods and said someone had taken his daughter, Wallace said. He also threatened her when she screamed again, though Wallace said she couldn't remember the specifics of the threat.
Wallace asked where the trail was and followed the man back to it, where they then walked in opposite directions, she said.
Wallace suffered scrapes and scratches from being dragged and contusions and swelling on her face from being punched, police photographs after the attack showed. She said she experienced daylong post-concussion headaches, which hampered her ability to do her job and still linger, though they come less often now.
Wallace described her attacker as a white man of medium height and weight who wore cargo shorts, a dark short-sleeved shirt, a baseball hat, sunglasses and a silver ring with the word "dad" on it. Prosecutors called in two witnesses who said they saw a similar man the same weekend of the attack: a woman who said the man ran up behind her the day before and a man who said he saw the man shortly before the attack.
The two and Wallace all said they were certain the man was Turner.
Investigators found a pair of sunglasses at the crime scene between Wallace's headband and her earbuds. Detective Roy Knotts with Fayetteville Police swabbed the nose piece and temples, or arms, of the glasses for DNA. The state Crime Lab found DNA on one arm that matched Turner's.
Turner was also listed among former or current Washington County Detention Center inmates who owned rings with the word "dad," though the ring listed was gold, not silver.
Turner's attorneys emphasized such inconsistencies. Wallace never told investigators her attacker had tattoos, but Turner has black tattoos covering much of his arms, said attorney Bobby Digby, who worked with Charlcee Small on the case. Wallace never said her attacker had lost his sunglasses. Seth Creed, one of the other witnesses and a deputy prosecutor for the county, said he got a good look at the man yet couldn't say for sure if he was wearing sunglasses.
"I had some other things to think about," Wallace said under cross-examination, conceding she could have been mistaken about some details, adding she was afraid for her life.
Digby pointed to other issues, including the fact that the Crime Lab found DNA from multiple people on the nose piece of the sunglasses at the scene. Investigators never showed the witnesses a photo line-up. Digby argued they also didn't fully investigate two other men with the same general description, including one whose family said he stayed around Lake Fayetteville and had paranoid schizophrenia.
Turner did not testify at trial, but jurors saw his interview with Knotts after his arrest last November. Turner repeatedly denied he was the attacker, questioning whether someone was deliberately targeting him and suggesting he might have sold the sunglasses to someone else before the attack. He asked if someone had looked for fingerprints on Wallace's skin; Knotts said no.
"I understand where you're coming from 100 percent, but at the same time it just don't make sense," Turner said.
A mental examination of Turner in September found him fit for trial, though he was diagnosed with methamphetamine disorder, major depressive disorder and panic disorder at the time of his examination.
Digby moved for a mistrial several times, arguing in part that prosecutors hadn't given him a police vehicle video of one of the other men with descriptions similar to Turner's. He also asked Friday to give the jury the option to find Turner guilty of a lesser false imprisonment charge. Washington County Circuit Judge Joanna Taylor denied the motions.
NW News on 11/19/2016