Killer gets 20 years in ’17 slaying

A 20-year-old Little Rock man, identified as a killer in his victim’s dying words, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for manslaughter.

Jasper Lamar Singleton pleaded guilty Monday in the July 2017 slaying of 43-year-old Steven Lavon McPherson. Under the agreement negotiated by his attorney, Lee Short, the charge was reduced from first-degree murder.

Last month, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Herb Wright barred prosecutors from using the testimony of

the Little Rock police officers who found the fatally wounded man in a residence at the Big Country Chateau apartments on Colonel Glenn Road.

McPherson, who appeared to be drifting in and out of consciousness, identified the man who shot him as “Fugi.”

Prosecutors contended that McPherson’s statements should be considered either a “dying declaration” or an “excited utterance,” both exemptions to the rules barring hearsay, which is a witness testifying about what someone said outside the courtroom.

A victim’s dying words are considered inherently truthful by the courts, since the victim presumably has no reason to lie, while the utterance, a spontaneous statement made in the heat of the moment, is similarly considered reliable by the court because the remarks are not the result of any kind of questioning and the speaker has not had the time to make up a lie.

But the judge sided with Short and suppressed the testimony after hearing how police, while tending McPherson’s wounds and waiting for an ambulance, questioned him repeatedly — hoping to get a dying declaration from him, first to find out who shot him,

then to learn if he could identify the Facebook photograph of the presumed suspect.

The judge also made it clear that his findings did not reflect any intentional wrongdoing by police.

Two other people in the apartment, Isaiah Rucker and Cheryl Hudson, identified Singleton as the man they knew as Fugi, who was with them in the apartment when McPherson was shot. Neither, however, said they saw the shooting.

Court records show that McPherson, a father of two with four grandchildren, was convicted of second-degree murder in April 1992 for his role in the slaying of 18-year-old Reginald Darnell Flowers of College Station.

Authorities said at the time that Flowers was shot during a series of arguments between two groups of teenagers in the Granite Mountain area.

Flowers was killed two days after McPherson’s 18th birthday. McPherson was accused of using a shotgun, and police seized a shotgun from the carport attic of McPherson’s home on Baltimore Street.

McPherson admitted shooting at Flowers’ red 1981 Chevrolet Camaro, testifying at his trial that someone in the car had fired at him first and that he was afraid of one of Flowers’ passengers, Wendell Piggee. McPherson was sentenced to 10 years in prison.