BENTONVILLE -- A convicted rapist and murderer serving life in prison for killing a teenage boy won't get new DNA testing, a circuit judge ruled Thursday.
Davis Don Carpenter pleaded guilty to capital murder and rape in 2001. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Carpenter and Joshua Brown were arrested in 1999 in connection with the rape and murder of 13-year-old Jesse Dirkhising.
Benton County Circuit Judge Brad Karen ruled Carpenter, 57, did not meet the requirements under the law concerning additional DNA testing. Carpenter admitted in open court to raping Dirkhising, so the identity of the perpetrator is not in question, according to Karen's ruling.
Carpenter filed a motion in April requesting new testing of evidence to prove his innocence of the rape charge. He claims no DNA collected at the scene connects him to the rape.
Carpenter said his attorneys coerced him into pleading guilty because they did not want "to try the highly emotional, highly visible case of a child murder." Matthew Light, a deputy prosecutor, filed a response to the motion, saying Carpenter's case did not meet the conditions for the court to order new tests.
Light noted that Carpenter was found at the scene of Dirkhising's rape and murder. No DNA testing will remove him from the scene, according to Light's response.
Police found notes at the scene where Carpenter instructed Brown to drug, bind and sodomize the teenager, according to the response. Police discovered Dirkhising on Sept. 26, 1999, naked and not breathing on the floor of a bedroom in an apartment at 1207 Sunset Drive in Rogers. Duct tape was wrapped around one of his hands.
He was pronounced dead at a local hospital. The cause of death was determined to be suffocation and positional asphyxia with acute amitriptyline intoxication (antidepressant poisoning).
A jury found Brown guilty of rape and first-degree murder. Then Circuit Judge David Clinger sentenced Brown to life in prison without the benefit of parole.
Brown is being held in the East Arkansas Regional Unit in Brickeys. Carpenter is being held in the Maximum Security Unit in Tucker.
Metro on 06/10/2019