A convicted sex offender accused of raping two runaway girls fell to his knees and wept when a Pulaski County jury acquitted him Thursday, a verdict that spared David Lynn McEuen an automatic life sentence because of his history of rape and child sex-crime convictions.
With no physical evidence, the testimony of the two teenagers was not enough to persuade the eight women and four men of the jury that McEuen had raped the girls. The panel deliberated about 3½ hours before exonerating the 53-year-old defendant of rape and sexual assault charges. McEuen declined to testify, which prevented his criminal history from being disclosed to the jury.
The first state criminal jury trial in the county since the pandemic began, the two-day proceeding before Circuit Judge Leon Johnson was held at the Arkansas State Fairgrounds in a building large enough to allow jurors to maintain a six-foot distance from one another.
In closing arguments, defense attorney Jimmy Morris said jurors might be disappointed that they hadn't heard McEuen's version of events, but that McEuen had said everything they needed to hear when he pleaded innocent to the charges.
"He pleaded not guilty. He said he didn't do it," Morris said. "That's the other side of the story. There is nothing to corroborate these girls' stories."
The girls were 13 and 14 years old in July 2017 when they met up with McEuen shortly after escaping from the Little Rock Youth Home, the psychiatric treatment facility for children on Colonel Glenn Road. The girls had sought out the 6-foot, 4-inch McEuen, whom they knew only as "Big Dave," because the older girl had met him earlier when she'd run away before and thought he would help them.
Morris and co-counsel Lee Short acknowledged that McEuen had been with the girls and had taken them to the empty North Little Rock warehouse at 1302 N. Eighth St. where he lived in a camper to provide them with food and shelter.
But the lawyers depicted McEuen as a good Samaritan whom the girls had repaid by turning him into a scapegoat to deflect punishment for their own misdeeds, including fleeing frin the facility and shoplifting.
To make McEuen the villain, the two told ever-shifting stories about what had happened to them, embellishing their accounts as necessary to win sympathy, even during their testimony, the lawyers said.
The girls initially denied participating in any sexual activity, Morris said. Both also denied McEuen had done anything wrong, with the older girl taking weeks to accuse him, Morris noted. They were either lying then or they were lying now at trial, he said.
"Anytime you have a person who will lie, you cannot believe them," Morris said.
Prosecutors Anna Catherine Cargile and Melissa Brown told jurors that what they had heard was not lies but rather the best efforts of two traumatized girls trying to express what McEuen had done to them.
Brown said their memories might have faltered some since it has been four years, and the two were being forced to dredge up recollections they'd prefer to forget. But the girls did their best to truthfully recount what had happened, McEuen repeatedly forcefully coercing them into sex, Brown said.
By coming to court to testify against him, the two, now 17 and 18, chose "the hard way" to address their suffering, Brown said. Both could have chosen to recant their accusations and avoid testifying completely, the prosecutor said.
"[They] chose to get up on the stand and tell you the truth," Brown said in closing arguments. "[They] could have said it didn't happen."
Thursday's acquittal does not mean that McEuen will go free immediately. He still faces charges of aggravated assault on a law officer and possession of prohibited items based on accusations he attacked a deputy in the jail and had a razor blade in his cell in December. McEuen is also charged with failing to register as a sex offender over accusations that he had moved into the North Little Rock warehouse without reporting that new address to authorities.
Also pending are three counts of terroristic threatening based on accusations that during an October 2018 jailhouse meeting with his previous legal team, he tore open wounds on his arms and splashed blood around the room while screaming threats at the three lawyers, who quit his case soon after.