A 34-year-old Iowa man, already a convicted killer, was ordered on Wednesday to spend the rest of his life in prison for his role in a 2018 fatal home-invasion robbery in Little Rock, linked to the killing of 23-year-old Devon Howard by only a few drops of blood.
A seven-man, five-woman Pulaski County jury ended the two-day trial of Jacovan Deronte Bush of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with less than 90 minutes of deliberation, finding him guilty of capital murder, aggravated residential burglary, aggravated robbery and felony theft.
The life sentence for the capital murder conviction was automatic but Circuit Judge Cathi Compton topped it with an additional 40 years for the other charges.
Prosecutors Robbie Jones and Michelle Quiller told jurors that Bush's guilt was a matter of "common sense," with his blood found on Howard's front door and on three spots inside the residence at the Eagle Nest apartments, 5 Falcon Court, immediately following the February 2018 murder.
With Bush's lawyers challenging the significance of the blood specks, the prosecutors told jurors that the evidentiary photos of the largest spot, barely an inch long, showed the smudge on a kitchen counter was fresh when investigators found it, then dried during the search of the apartment.
"You know what blood looks like. Everyone has seen blood dry," Quiller said in her closing statement. "The blood identifies the defendant."
Two men took part in the attack that killed Howard, and prosecutors acknowledged they don't know who the other man is or exactly what role Bush played in Howard's murder.
Bush's mystery accomplice might be the one who shot Howard, but even so, Bush is just as guilty under the law for participating in the home invasion robbery, prosecutors said. It's not clear whether Howard's attackers found any money. They left behind jars of marijuana in the kitchen. It's also not known for sure why robbers would have targeted Howard, although investigators heard rumors that he'd just won a $2,000 bet from an acquaintance on a basketball game.
Defense attorney Bill James said jurors shouldn't trust the blood findings, arguing that the police's civilian crime-scene search unit had mistaken old blood in the apartment -- which he labeled a "dope house" - for fresh.
The apartment was a regular haven for drug users, so if the kitchen speck was dry when police arrived, it could have been there for any length of time, rendering it useless as evidence Bush had been in the apartment when Howard was killed, James said in his final remarks.
"The reason they want you to believe it's wet is because if it's dry -- like it is everywhere else -- he's not guilty," said James, with co-counsel Alex Morphis, "If the blood is dry, they lose."
James further urged jurors to be wary of siding with prosecutors due to the absence of other proof, pointing out that authorities had no eyewitnesses or fingerprints to show Bush was involved.
Bush, who did not testify, became a suspect when the FBI's national DNA database matched his genetic material to blood found in Howard's apartment, with Bush's arrest in January 2020 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, coming almost two years after Howard was killed. He's been in custody ever since.
According to testimony, police arrived at the scene almost immediately after Howard was killed, shot in the back on his living room floor.
Officers had been called by two women who had been in the apartment with him when he was attacked, his friend Ericka Criswell and his cousin Tiana Howard. The women said they and Tiana Howard's two children all had been watching TV in Howard's bedroom when someone started beating on the front door.
Devon Howard left the room and went to the door, with the women telling police they could hear a fight break out almost immediately, with the intruders forcing their way through the door as they shouted demands at Howard to give up his money. Sounds of a scuffle quickly gave way to a noisy search of the apartment, as the robbers went through the cabinets, even searching the refrigerator and oven, according to testimony.
Criswell testified that the women and children tried to hide in the adjoining bathroom before one armed man broke in, likewise demanding Devon Howard's money.
Criswell said neither she nor Tiana Howard, who has since moved to Texas and was not called as a witness, knew anything about money in the home, with the gunman threatening to blow their heads off if the money was not forthcoming. The robber then took their phones, Criswell told jurors, saying she could not identify Bush as the man she saw that night.
Tiana Howard, 26, offered to help the men search and was taken away briefly, returning to the bathroom with a bleeding head wound after one of the robbers pistol-whipped her when money couldn't be found, Criswell said.
Criswell told jurors they all waited a few moments after the robbers left the apartment before going into the living room, describing how they entered the room and found Devon Howard face down and dead in a pool of blood.
Bush's blood would be found in the hall, bedroom door and kitchen counter.
According to court records and newspaper accounts from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Bush pleaded guilty in January 2013 to voluntary manslaughter, intimidation with a dangerous weapon and going armed with intent to use for killing 19-year-old Thomas Horvath in an April 2008 shooting during a fistfight between two groups of people in an apartment complex parking lot. Bush would have been 19.
Bush had been convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison for the killing but the conviction was overturned on appeal in 2010. In exchange for his manslaughter plea, Bush was sentenced to 25 years in prison, but he was paroled to Arkansas in December 2016.
The Iowa Court of Appeals overturned the murder conviction because prosecutors were able to use inadmissible statements during his trial from witnesses who recanted claims they had seen Bush shoot the victim.