In hot-car case, device said to hold crime files

HOT SPRINGS — The thumb drive that reportedly held video from the day the 17-month-old son of a Garland County circuit judge died after being left in a hot car also contained other evidentiary files from Hot Springs Police Department cases.

Defense attorneys in the negligent-homicide case against Judge Wade Naramore spent much of Friday’s pretrial hearing deposing several witnesses about the video, which they had been requesting since March and were not notified until late May that it had been lost.

The video had been downloaded from the Garland County Courthouse security system to the personal USB drive of Hot Springs police detective Mark Fallis shortly after Thomas Naramore’s death July 24, 2015.

It wasn’t until special prosecutor Scott Ellington requested the evidence this spring that Fallis said he discovered the video was not on the electronic device nor on his office computer. The missing footage reportedly shows Naramore parking his car in his reserved spot, entering the courthouse and returning three hours later, all the while with his young son strapped in the car seat in the back of the vehicle.

Hot Springs Police Chief Jason Stachey testified that he was not aware of the missing video until an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter called him in May for a com-

ment.

“I needed answers immediately,” he said.

Stachey — who had been named chief in May — said he rushed to the tech department and spent hours there trying to recover the missing evidence. He immediately began an internal investigation and demanded the personnel involved in the case submit written documentation detailing every step until it was discovered that the video was missing.

“I wanted that chain all the way up to me,” Stachey said.

The chief testified he was not aware that Fallis had kept the USB, which contained information on several cases, on his person or in his desk.

Earlier, Fallis had testified that he had stored the flash drive in his desk drawer.

“Is that the proper way to store evidence?” defense attorney Patrick Benca asked.

“It was my personal flash drive,” Fallis answered.

Under examination by defense attorney Erin Cassinelli, Fallis confirmed earlier testimony by state Crime Laboratory technician Jeff Taylor that the 16-gigabyte thumb drive contained “thousands” of other items from other cases, including “a robbery in June.”

Both Fallis and his supervisor, Sgt. Chris Hayes, testified that the video was not logged as evidence through department protocol and defense attorneys showed that the video never had appeared on an evidence report until after the defense requested the full case file.

Benca asked Stachey on the stand if he had “concerns about other cases.”

Stachey said there are “still pieces being put together” in the investigation.

“If changes need to be made, then we will make them,” he said.

The computer, as well as the thumb drive, was taken in early June to the state Crime Lab. Technicians were unable to recover the video after several weeks of trying.

Special Circuit Judge John

Langston did not rule Friday on the defense motion filed last week asking for sanctions, which include a range of options from the barring of testimony on the video to dismissing the case. Instead, the decision will be rendered before the jury trial begins Aug. 15.

Deputy prosecutor Thomas Young told the judge that the sanctions were unwarranted because there was not “any intentional act by anyone” that resulted in the missing evidence.

The video, Young said, is not exculpatory — meaning it does not prove or disprove a crime.

The issue is “not complicated. It’s simple. It’s his child and he had a duty to protect that child,” Young said, adding that it was not “smoke and mirrors.”

“It wasn’t like we were trying to hide anything,” Young said.

Cassinelli called Young’s “smoke and mirrors” comment “offensive.”

“A child was in that car and died,” Cassinelli said.

Langston asked the attorneys if they wanted him to issue a ruling Friday, but Cassinelli said she preferred to wait for the prosecution to produce requested email communications between the prosecution team and the Police Department concerning the missing video.

The defense also asked for a copy of the “screen shot” of the USB drive’s contents, which was sent to Taylor at the Crime Lab when the Police Department submitted the electronic device.

Fallis said from the stand that he did not know where the screen shot originated, but he did not provide it.

If found guilty of the Class A misdemeanor, Naramore could face up to one year in jail and a $2,500 fine.

From 2005 to 2015, 12 children have died in Arkansas from being left in hot vehicles, according to an analysis by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The dispositions of those cases vary, but most resulted in charges and only a few resulted in jail time.

Of the 12 cases, prosecutors chose to press charges in eight. One case — that of Matt Tickle, whose 16-month-old daughter, Landyn, died after being left in a vehicle Aug. 3, 2012 — was dismissed three years later.

Of the six cases in which charges were filed, and the defendants were either convicted by a jury or negotiated a deal, four were sentenced to jail. None was sentenced to more than six months in jail.

Rancocas Foreman, a van driver for the Child Care Center of Arkansas, was fined $1,000 and received no jail time for the June 6, 2005, death of 3-year-old Marcellus Johnson. Foreman forgot the child was strapped in his car seat when Foreman parked the van after running his route.

Marcellus died of hyperthermia after five hours in the van with temperatures above 90 degrees.