A motion to transfer the first-degree murder charges filed against 21-year-old Baxter Stowers of Salesville to juvenile court has been denied, according to an opinion issued by the Arkansas Court of Appeals Wednesday.
The court did strike down a misdemeanor charge of possession of a handgun by a minor, citing a jurisdictional issue.
Stowers’ attorney, Shane Wilkinson of Bentonville, filed an appeal of a ruling by retired Circuit Judge Gordon Webb, who is handling the case, denying a motion Wilkinson filed asking the court to dismiss the charges against his client based largely on a lengthy delay in holding a hearing on an earlier request to have the proceedings moved to juvenile court.
Stowers is charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of then 41-year-old Jeremy Wayne Alman of Salesville in early October 2020. Stowers was 17-years-old at the time — two days short of his 18th birthday.
LONG DELAY
The motion to transfer the case and designate it for Extended Juvenile Jurisdiction(EJJ) was originally filed February 16, 2022, and a hearing was requested within 90 days.
Extended Juvenile Jurisdiction designation has many parts, including giving a court power to try offenses not ordinarily dealt with by that court, and the option of using blended sentencing.
In an article on EJJ published in the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s Law Journal, it was pointed out that EJJ made it easier to balance the twin needs to hold children accountable for their crimes, while affording them opportunities for rehabilitation.
The hearing requested in mid-February,2022 was not held until July 31, 2023, and it was August 1 last year when Judge Webb filed his written opinion on why he had denied the juvenile court transfer and the defense motion to dismiss the case.
TIME TO REHABILITATE
One of 10 factors that must be weighed when deciding on whether to move a case to juvenile court or designate it for Extended Juvenile Jurisdiction is whether there is enough time between a conviction and the defendant’ 21st birthday to allow for rehabilitation.
In his appeal brief, Wilkinson pointed to the court’s delay in dealing with the original motion as “perhaps the most salient” of his arguments to the Appeals Court.
COURT RESPONSIBLE FOR DELAYS
Wilkinson says unexplained foot dragging by the court was at fault for the bulk of the delays. In his appeal, the Bentonville attorney said his client had repeated his request several times between the initial request and the eventual hearing.
The defense attorney said that in Judge Webb’s ruling he pointed to the fact that there was not enough time left before Stowers reached 21 for him to participate in an intensive rehabilitation program.
Wilkinson wrote that, “it is wholly unfair for the court to fail to timely act on the juvenile transfer motion and then cite the court’s own unexplained delays as a basis for rejecting the motion.”
The defense attorney said the situation presented in the Stowers’ case must be corrected, “or any circuit court could simply postpone entering its order denying a transfer motion until the eleventh hour as happened in this case, citing the fact the defendant is now too close to or past the age of 21.”
Wilkinson said, despite the filing of several motions asking for continuances in the case in which it was mentioned the transfer hearing had not been held, it was apparently a letter from prosecutors to Judge Webb that eventually got the hearing scheduled.
The defense attorney said that letter from the prosecutor’s office to the judge warned that not having the hearing until “the eve of the trial” might result in the filing of an interlocutory appeal that could be disruptive to the logistics of the trial.
An interlocutory appeal is one made on an order issued during the litigation.
It was just such an appeal that Wilkinson filed and that is now in the hands of the Arkansas Court of Appeals. The Arkansas Attorney General’s office represents Baxter County Circuit Court.
An answer to Stower’s appeal was filed by Assistant Attorney General Evangeline Bacon November 3.
TWO FACTORS JUSTIFY DENIAL
In the answer, the attorney general’s office contends that Stowers does not contest two of the 10 factors on which Judge Webb was required to base his decision.
Those unchallenged factors dealt with the fact that the offenses were serious and committed against a person in which a death occurred.
The state argues that the two unchallenged factors alone were enough to deny the motion to transfer the case to juvenile court.
In the appeal filed by the defense, Wilkinson admitted that asking for a dismissal in the Stowers’ case, was “an extreme relief” but was justified since his client’s “right to a timely hearing has been extremely violated.”
In his denial of the initial motion to transfer the case, Judge Webb wrote that the “slowness of obtaining psychological examinations delayed the process until it is simply too late to realistically send him to a facility that could achieve any level of rehabilitation by his twenty-first birthday” which was then two months away.
In touching on other aspects of Judge Webb’s ruling, Wilkinson wrote that the court appeared to only give weight to the stipulated facts that supported Stowers’ prosecution.
CLAIM OF SELF DEFENSE
He said, for example, that Stowers had claimed self-defense from the beginning, but in turning down the court transfer motion, Judge Webb characterized Stowers’ actions as “aggressive and willful.”
Wilkinson wrote that the victim had allegedly showed up at Stowers’ residence the night before the shooting dressed only in his underwear and acting in a way described as “not right.”
Stowers said the visit frightened people in the residence, including his mother. He told investigators he stopped by the victim’s house the next day to find out what the problem was and to ask that the behavior not be repeated.
He said that when the victim answered the door, he was “yelling and screaming” and was alleged to have attacked Stowers.
Stowers told investigators he pulled his firearm from its holster and shot the man. He said it was not unusual for him to carry a gun and that he had been around weapons since he was very young.
In its answer to the appeal filed by Stowers, the state contends that statutes governing circuit-to-juvenile-court- transfers are “not dependent upon considerations of self-defense.”
REPORTED INCIDENT HIMSELF
Stowers himself called 911 about 2 p.m. Oct. 5, 2020, and reported he had shot another male at an address along County Road 111.
When deputies responded, they found Stowers waiting for them in the driveway with his hands up.
He was described as wearing red and white Nike shoes, blue jeans and a St. Louis Cardinal logo shirt and to have been holding a wallet and cellphone in his hand.
The victim’s body was found lying on a concrete floor between the front entrance to the residence and a door leading to a screened-in-porch.
He was reported to have six gunshot wounds to the head. Investigators said there also appeared to be a wound to the victim’s right arm.
According to a news release from Baxter County Sheriff John Montgomery, the weapon used in the shooting was recovered at the scene.
There were no signs of a struggle inside the residence, investigators reported.
In addition to first-degree murder, Stowers is charged with aggravated residential burglary, criminal use of a prohibited weapon and possession of a handgun by a minor.
PSYCHOLOGICAL EXAMS
Judge Webb earlier signed orders for psychological examinations at Wilkinson’s request.
The exams were done to determine Stowers’ fitness to proceed in his case and if he can be held criminally responsible for his acts.
Since the information contained in the evaluations is sealed, the public can only assume the person evaluated was found fit to proceed and able to be held criminally responsible if the case continues beyond the time the evaluations are delivered to the court.
According to electronic court records, the results of the evaluations were filed in November last year.
In arguing for the motion to transfer the case to juvenile court, Wilkinson wrote, “It is a cornerstone of American jurisprudence that juvenile offenders are less culpable than adult criminals and should be treated differently to afford them a path toward rehabilitation rather than outright condemnation and disregard.”
The Stowers case was listed as inactive after the appeal of Judge Webb’s ruling was made. Judge Webb signed an order of continuance on August 7. In the order, the judge said the case would be continued until “the Monday following the mandate from the Court of Appeals.”
Stowers has been free on $200,000 bond.
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