Suspect to get mental test
Realtor-slaying defendant objects to move
Over his client’s objections, Arron Michael Lewis’ lawyer announced his intentions Wednesday to explore an insanity defense to capital murder and kidnapping charges in the death of a real estate agent who disappeared after going out to show a home.
That process began immediately with a court order Wednesday for Lewis to undergo a psychological examination by doctors at the State Hospital.
The announcement by defense attorney Jim Hensley of Conway came Wednesday as the 33-year-old Jacksonville man and his estranged wife made their first Pulaski County Circuit Court appearance to answer charges that they kidnapped and killed Beverly Lownes Carter in September.
Carter, 50, of Scott, the mother of three, was reported missing Sept. 25 by her husband, who found her car and cellphone at the home she had planned to show. Her disappearance captured the attention of the state and the nation. It took five days for sheriff’s deputies to determine that she had been killed, to track down a suspect in her case and then to find her body, which was bound in duct tape.
Volunteers joined law enforcement officers in the search for Carter. On Sept. 28, deputies announced that they were looking for Lewis as a “person of interest” in
her disappearance. Deputies released a photo of Lewis bleeding from his nose, mouth and forehead from injuries that they said he got in a late-morning car crash on Jacksonville Cato Road in Sherwood that occurred while he was under police surveillance.
In revealing their interest in Lewis, deputies said he had left the Little Rock hospital where he had been taken after the crash without being treated for his injuries and that they had obtained an arrest warrant charging him with kidnapping. When police found Lewis the next day — four days after Carter vanished — at an apartment complex on Green Mountain Drive in Little Rock, he was carrying a gun and had been driving a dump truck that had been reported stolen from his employer.
Investigators added the capital murder charge after an interrogation spanning 12 hours. Carter’s body, bound with duct tape, was found Sept. 30 in a makeshift grave behind Lewis’ employer, Argos Southern Star Concrete on Arkansas 5 in Cabot.
Announcing the discovery of Carter’s body, deputies said that Lewis had contacted Carter the day she was last seen alive by her family, posing as a potential client and arranging a meeting at the Old River Drive home in Scott where her car and phone were found.
Information from Carter’s phone drew Lewis to the attention of investigators, officials said, but no more information was released by authorities. Prosecutors subsequently got a court order to keep the evidence that led to the couple’s arrests secret, saying they feared pretrial publicity would taint the jury pool.
In an interview from prison, Lewis told a reporter for Little Rock TV station KARKTV, Channel 4 that he did not kill Carter and that she had willingly gone along with him the night she was reported missing.
Lewis told the KARK reporter that “anything that did occur” that night was an accident and that the case against him isn’t as “clean-cut” as authorities have made it out to be, but he would not answer all of the questions put to him.
The court documents formally charging Lewis with capital murder and kidnapping that were filed last week say Lewis “confessed” to kidnapping the woman but wouldn’t say where she was. The papers also indicate officials believe Carter could have been killed the same night she vanished.
Lewis’ wife, 41-year-old Crystal Hope Lowery, who has denied knowing anything about what happened to Carter, was not immediately named as a suspect in the woman’s slaying. Lowery had been arrested on a misdemeanor charge — theft by receiving, sometimes referred to as possession of stolen property — on Sept. 29.
Authorities would not reveal any details of what Lowery had been accused of possessing.
In late October, she was arrested and charged with capital murder and kidnapping. She’s been jailed without bail ever since.
Also that month, the father of Lowery’s children suggested in custody filings that Lowery had been caught with the dead woman’s cellphone.
On Wednesday, Circuit Judge Herb Wright denied a request by Lowery’s attorneys to impose a protective order that would increase secrecy on the case to prevent information getting out ahead of trial.
The judge said he was confident both sides could keep the information that they wanted kept from the public without him getting involved.
“I’ve dealt with this in other cases and it’s my experience a protective order is not necessary. If you don’t want it [information] out there, don’t put it out there,” Wright said.
MENTAL EVALUATION
ORDERED
With Lewis’ sanity called into question by his lawyer — done in lieu of the traditional innocent plea made at first court appearance — his trial cannot be scheduled and the proceedings against him cannot move forward until the judge makes a determination at a hearing that Lewis is competent to stand trial.
“Whether your client wants it or not, it’s up to you,” the judge told Lewis’ attorney when the lawyer said his client does not want to submit to an examination.
Lewis will be tested to see whether he is competent to assist his lawyer and whether he was suffering from mental illness or from brain damage when Carter was killed in September.
The process of scheduling and undergoing such an evaluation, which requires doctors to interview the defendant and possibly his friends, relatives and even prison guards who monitor him, plus review his criminal and medical files, typically takes four to six months but could be longer.
Mental evaluations are a common procedure in murder cases, with most defendants cleared to stand trial. A finding of mental illness or brain damage does not automatically preclude a defendant from standing trial.
But determining whether the defendant is competent can take even longer if his lawyer decides to dispute a State Hospital finding that the defendant is fit for trial.
The judge set a Feb. 26 hearing for a report on the progress of the process.
Lewis has an 11-year-old criminal record with arrests in six states, including Arkansas, and convictions for robbery, transporting stolen vehicles and theft. But there’s no indication he’s ever been found to be mentally ill in any of those cases. He has been ordered to undergo counseling for drug abuse and mental health before, court records show. The psychological counseling was a requirement of his 2007 conviction for a federal probation violation.
Lewis’ court appearance Wednesday lasted about three minutes. The 5-foot, 11-inch 156-pound brown-hair, browneyed defendant was kept in a holding cell outside the courtroom until the judge signaled bailiffs to escort him in. Dressed in a blue uniform with his hands and feet shackled, he was escorted by a three-deputy guard, two of whom held his arms throughout the entire proceeding. He was taken away immediately afterward, with the hearing lasting slightly longer than usual because he wanted the judge to order that letters he had written to his wife be received by her.
The judge said he had no authority to get involved and suggested Lewis take up his grievance with prison authorities. Lewis then complained that it was Pulaski County jail officials who were withholding his letters from Lowery, but the judge said there was nothing he could do.
Lewis has been in prison since his parole was revoked four days after his arrest in the murder case. He had been sentenced to prison in 2011 after pleading guilty to theft charges in Washington and Benton counties.
Lowery’s attorneys on Wednesday did not address the question about her husband’s letters. Lowery filed for divorce from Lewis in October, about two weeks before she was arrested in the murder case.
In her divorce petition, which she filed without the assistance of a lawyer, Lowery said the couple had split up in August — about a month before Carter’s death — after about five months of marriage, and that she did not know he had seven felony convictions. She cited “general indignities” as grounds. The couple have no children.
Lewis has not responded to the petition, and it’s not clear whether he knows about it. He is Lowery’s third husband and has also been married at least once, possibly twice, court records show.
SEPARATE TRIALS
Most significantly for Lowery in her five-minute court appearance was that chief deputy prosecutor John Johnson told the judge he has agreed to try her separately from her husband.
Her lawyers did not ask the judge to set a trial date but instead had him schedule her next appearance to coincide with Lewis’ February date. They said they wanted to see what happens with Lewis’ mental evaluation before scheduling trial.
Neither side would discuss trial strategy, but the Arkansas Rules of Criminal Procedure allow multiple defendants who share charges to be tried individually if one has confessed or implicated the other pretrial or if their defenses are antagonistic or mutually exclusive. Arkansas Supreme Court precedent also allows for separate proceedings when the evidence against one defendant is stronger than the evidence against another.
The rules also allow for separate trials for defendants whose constitutional right to speedy trial could be jeopardized by the time it takes to try all of them together or if pretrial publicity could taint the proceedings against one of them.
Lowery is being represented by attorneys Brett Qualls and Lott Rolfe IV who specialize in murder cases for the public defender’s office. They took over her case from attorney Rick Holiman who had represented her when all she was charged with was a misdemeanor theft by receiving charge that is connected to the murder case.
In her application for a public defender that was submitted Wednesday, Lowery reported she has not worked since May 31, but did not say where she had been employed before nor how much she earned. Court records list her occupation as student.
The mother of two — a 17-year-old son who lives with his father in Kansas and a 13-year-old daughter who had lived with her — did say she had an $11,000 401(k) and had received child support but did not own any property or cars. She reported owing $24,000 in school loans.
Her children’s father, Lowery’s second husband, has since gained full custody of their daughter, at least temporarily, after Lowery tested positive for PCP at an October court hearing despite testifying she does not use illegal drugs. The custody judge also wrote in his order turning the girl over to her father that he was dubious about her assertion that she did not know about Lewis’ criminal history.
Lowery’s ex-husband also reported that his daughter had told him Lewis was a heavy user of methamphetamine, court filings show.