After he started doing his time, his wife died.  She had agreed to take care of her vacationing neighbors’ dogs.   One day, she went over to feed them and they had escaped their pen.  They were pit bulls.  She was mauled to death and her body wasn’t discovered until the vacationing neighbors returned and found the dogs still upon her lifeless body.

There was a memorial service for her but the Defendant was unable to attend since he was in prison.

As time went by, the Defendant had a growing urge to pay his final respects to his fallen wife.  As the anniversary of her death approached, he concocted a plan to go see her memorial marker and pay one last, final visit.

He contacted a family member who brought him a phone which he snuck into Cummins. He made arrangements for someone to drop him a car and leave it near Grinder Switch, a landmark adjacent to Cummins.

As part of his job at Cummins, a working farm, the Defendant drove a tractor.  One day the Defendant simply drove the tractor off the prison farm property and went to Grinder Switch for the car. He got the car and headed north.  He got nearly where is wife is memorialized and decided it might be smart to ditch the car.  He figured the authorities might be wise to it and looking to find him in it.

Sure enough, the authorities had noticed him missing and launched an investigation.  The Defendant covered the last of the distance to his wife on foot and had a moment of silent respect for her at her marker and then he moved on.

The authorities, who by this time had embarked on a massive manhunt, guessed he might visit his wife.  By the time they got there, he’d already come and gone.  They didn’t find him there, but did find his still wet creek swum socks.

They found him at a nearby relative’s house and the Defendant was arrested without incident.

He was subsequently charged with Escape and with being a habitual offender.

Mr. Hall undertook to represent him.  Despite the fact the Arkansas Department of Corrections had spent significant resources and manpower to find and arrest the Defendant, Mr. Hall was able to spin the Defendant’s story in a sympathetic light, and was able to negotiate a plea agreement which added no time to the sentence the Defendant was already doing.

It seems that the relationship between the Defendant and his ex was extremely stormy and often volatile about money.

After some particular nastiness that resulted after the ex went to visit an old flame, and the Defendant wouldn’t give her traveling money, she threw a fit, so the Defendant kicked her and her daughter out of his house.

Shortly thereafter, the daughter accused the Defendant of having consensual sex with her on several occasions.

Since she was a minor and unable to consent to sex in they eyes of the law, the defendant was charged with what is known on the streets as ‘statutory rape.’

The Defendant denied ever having sex with the girl and so a trial was held and the Defendant faced 10 to 40, or life if convicted.

During the discovery process, it came to light that the minor victim had an intact hymen. Further, she had no other physical or medical evidence to support her claims of rape. There were no injuries to her sex organs and no signs of sex at all.

The evidence key to the defense case was the fact that the little girl had an intact hymen. Mr. Hall tried the case to a jury and the Defendant was found not guilty.

He denied it and so the case went to trial.  His mother, a double amputee with no legs, was found smothered to death in her apartment, beside her wheel chair.  There was no sign of forced entry.  The only piece of evidence tying the defendant to the scene was his fingerprint on a Coke can in the trash in the kitchen.

The defendant denied having been in the apartment for two weeks.  Family members later testified that his mother saved aluminum cans and never let Coke cans get in the trash in the kitchen; she kept them together with other cans in a special bin in the hall closet.

The other evidence against the defendant did not look good for the State.  A student at UALR from Malaysia gave a statement that she had seen a man, 5’6″ and 150 pounds, knocking on the mother’s apartment door saying, ‘Open up. Let me in. It’s your son.’

The problem for the State was that the defendant was 6 feet tall and weighed 220 pounds. Her description was horribly flawed and things like that often cause insurmountable problems for the prosecution.  Another witness had seen a man running away from the scene and described him as 6 feet tall and 220 pounds.  But when he was shown a photo spread containing the defendant’s picture shortly after the crime, he was unable to identify the defendant.  Again, this was a difficult problem with the State’s case.

Unbelievably, the defendant had previously been found not guilty of two unrelated murders.  As bad as it was for the State, this case had to go to trial, because the feeling in the prosecutor’s office was that we had to get this guy off the street.

As Mr. Hall prepared for trial, he realized that even though there were flaws in the student’s description, he needed her testimony nonetheless.  He learned that she had returned to Malaysia.  She had gone back to her home in Kuala Ampang, about an hour from the capital, Kuala Lampur.   Mr. Hall got in touch with the U. S. State Department in Washington and asked for help locating the witness abroad.  They found her and the Prosecutor’s Office made arrangements to fly her back for trial.

Mr. Hall, who is 6’5″ himself, picked her up at the airport.  She was tiny.  Not five feet tall.   He asked her then how tall he, himself is, to which she replied, “Maybe five foot six.”   There was the answer to her flawed description of the perpetrator. It was clear that being so small herself, she didn’t have a handle on accurately describing people’s height.

She testified at trial and made a great witness.

Next witness was the eyewitness who gave a correct description but couldn’t photo i.d. the defendant.   At trial, Mr. Hall asked him could he identify the defendant in the courtroom even though he’d been unable to pick him out of photographs.  He said sure. He then pointed to the defendant.  Mr. Hall asked him to explain why he’d been unable to pick him out of the photo spread, how he knew that this defendant was the man.   The witness said simply, “Those eyes, man, those eyes.”   At which point all eyes turned to the defendant who sat bug-eyed at the defense table, his big, round, brown prominent eyes pushing out from his forehead.  And everyone in the courtroom knew exactly who the witness had seen running away from the apartment.

The jury returned a verdict of guilty on Capitol Felony Murder and the defendant was sentenced to life with out parole.