Trial in woman’s death to start

Two men charged; Malvern resident’s body found in field

Two men indicted in 2019 by a federal grand jury in connection with the death of a Malvern woman whose body was found in a Hot Spring County pasture in the summer of 2018 — nearly two years after she disappeared — will go on trial this week in federal court in Little Rock.

Donald Bill Smith, 37, of Malvern, and Samuel “Big Hit” Sherman, 38, of Batesville, were indicted in September 2019 on several charges in connection with the shooting death of 44-yearold Suzen Cooper.

Cooper, who federal officials said was a confidential informant at the time of her death, was last seen on Sept. 26, 2016, in Malvern and was reported missing shortly after. Her skeletal remains were discovered in early August 2018 in a field off Grigsby Ford Road, a few miles west of Malvern.

In February 2017, her former sister-in-law, Racheal Cooper, was charged with first-degree murder and pleaded guilty in August 2018 to a reduced charge of hindering apprehension or prosecution. She was sentenced in Hot Spring County Circuit Court to 25 years in the Arkansas Department of Corrections.

Racheal Cooper was accused of taking Suzen Cooper to where she was killed on the pretext of giving her a ride to exchange hydrocodone pills for methamphetamine. Once the two arrived at the Grigsby Ford Road location near the pasture where Suzen Cooper’s body was found nearly two years later, federal prosecutors said Smith shot

her to death with a .22-caliber pistol to prevent her from testifying against Sherman in a supervised release revocation hearing on Oct. 19, 2016 before U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright.

Sherman had been released from prison in July 2015 after serving time on a federal narcotics conspiracy conviction. Court records alleged that he violated the conditions of his release by selling methamphetamine to an unnamed confidential informant on two occasions later that year.

He was arrested on May 16, 2016, on a warrant from the Sheridan Police Department and bonded out of jail that same day, court records said. On Oct. 27, 2016, just over a month after Suzen Cooper was last seen, Sherman was sentenced to an additional 24 months in prison by Wright for the supervised release violations outlined by the U.S. Probation Office.

Although the allegations against Smith and Sherman are capital crimes, the U.S. Attorney’s Office filed last March a notice of intent to not seek the death penalty. Under that notice, the maximum penalty either man could face is life imprisonment.

According to an indictment handed up by a federal grand jury on Sept. 3, 2019, Sherman was believed to have contacted Smith on Sept. 24, 2016, to arrange for Cooper’s murder. The relationship between the two men is not explained in the indictment, but it alleges that on Sept. 26, 2016, Smith shot and killed Cooper and buried her in a field alongside Grigsby Ford Road.

Smith is charged in the indictment with conspiracy to cause witness tampering resulting in death, witness tampering resulting in death, conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine, and several weapons violations related to drug trafficking.

Sherman is charged with the same crimes, with the exception of witness tampering resulting in death. It is not alleged that he was present at the time of Cooper’s death.

At a pretrial conference last Wednesday, Chief U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. denied a request to delay the start of the trial by one week, noting that under the current court calendar, any delay in one proceeding would create a ripple effect that could potentially affect proceedings throughout the calendar.

“I wish, counsel, the Court could accommodate you on that but I cannot because of other trials and hearings,” Marshall said. “We’re going to start as planned next week. … We need to stick to our schedule.”

A motion to sever the two defendants was also denied over the objection of Sherman’s defense attorneys, George Morledge and Jeffrey Rosenzweig.

“There’s a corollary issue there which may be implicated, which is the seating arrangements,” Rosenzweig said. “It’s our position, without waiving the severance motion, that the courtroom could be arranged so that there’s no way a jury could think there’s any association with the Smith interests.”

Rosenzweig noted that evidence to suggest that Smith had killed Cooper could be a prejudicial factor toward Sherman but he argued that even physical separation in the courtroom would be unlikely to separate the actions of the two defendants in a jury’s mind.

“That’s the objection,” he said.

Marshall said he would be open to further arguments on the issue but said the motion would be overruled in the immediate term. He said he would arrange for the two defendants to be physically separated by eliminating some room in the public gallery to allow the tables to be spread further apart.

“Defendant severance is something that I’ll raise at several points,” Marshall said. “I’ll be thinking about how to raise that in the voir dire.”

Jury selection is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. Wednesday with opening statements to follow either later in the day or the following morning, depending on how long it takes to seat 12 jurors and four alternates.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Anne Gardner, who along with fellow prosecutor Bart Dickinson will be prosecuting the case, said she anticipated the opening statement for the government would take 20 minutes. Rosenzweig estimated that he would need 10 to 15 minutes to open.

“That seems extraordinarily short,” said Blake Hendrix, who, along with his co-counsel Annie Depper, make up Smith’s defense team. “Now, to be conservative, 30 minutes?”

“I’ll let you have however much Ms. Gardner uses,” Marshall said.

“Fair enough,” Hendrix responded.

The trial is expected to last about two weeks, according to attorneys on both sides.