Trial begins in ’19 Fayetteville slaying

FAYETTEVILLE — Prosecutors on Tuesday opened the capital murder trial of Marlon Terryonna Smith by calling the two people who were standing next to Scott Kendricks when he was shot in the head.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in the case.

Smith has denied shooting Kendricks or even being there when Kendricks was shot.

Police and prosecutors say Smith, 35, shot Kendricks — also known as “Hot” — in the head without provocation at a family gathering in south Fayetteville three years ago.

Katherine Smith told jurors Marlon Smith walked up to a small group of people gathered around a fire pit in the yard of the home and was standing by Kendricks.

“He just shot Scott and walked off and got in his car,” Katherine Smith said.

Christopher Blackburn, the other witness, told jurors a similar story.

“There wasn’t no argument or nothing. He just up and shot him,” Blackburn said. “He shot Hot.”

Katherine Smith said she initially told police it was dark and she couldn’t see who had shot Kendricks, but in a second interview the following day, she told police it was Marlon Smith.

Prosecutors also called two witnesses who said Marlon Smith said he killed Kendricks.

Dean Hejl, a jailer at the Washington County Detention Center, said Smith got upset when he placed another detainee in his cell and threatened that he’d just blown someone’s brains out.

Casey Simon, a longtime friend of Marlon Smith, said Smith came to his home after the shooting and told him he had shot Kendricks.

“He said, ‘I just put a bullet in Hot’s brain,’” Simon said.

Nikita Blackburn testified that Kendricks and Smith had been in an altercation several months before the fatal shooting in which Kendricks had beaten Smith with his fists and a baseball bat, but said she did not know what the fight was about.

Prosecuting Attorney Matt Durrett told jurors the killing was retribution for that beating.

“This defendant took a gun and put it inches away from Scott Kendricks’ head and pulled the trigger. This was premeditated. It was a deliberate act,” Durrett said in his opening statement. “He’d been thinking about it since that beating he took a few months earlier. He had a plan.”

Durrett said the shot entered behind Kendricks’ ear, traveled through his mouth, shattering his jaw, and exited under his chin. Kendricks was alive for some time after being shot.

Police body camera video showed Kendricks bleeding profusely and fighting to breathe as first responders tried to stem the bleeding and load him in an ambulance. Kendricks lost consciousness in the ambulance and was pronounced dead at a local hospital, Durrett said.

The defense chipped away at the prosecution’s theory. David Hogue, Smith’s attorney, told jurors prosecutors can’t prove premeditation or deliberation required to sustain a capital murder conviction. Hogue said it’s still not clear what actually happened because witnesses have changed their stories.

“We don’t know how it happened. We don’t know why it happened,” Hogue said.

Later Tuesday, Hogue suggested the killing might have been a drug deal gone bad because police found a small bag containing a white residue behind the chair Kendricks was sitting in when he was shot and about $290 in cash was blowing around on the ground near the crime scene.

Police said they also found some suspected marijuana in a vehicle at the scene.

“That was one thing nobody would talk about,” Garret Levine, a detective with the Fayetteville Police Department, said of any drug connection.

Other evidence collected behind the chair where Kendricks was sitting included a baseball cap, one spent 9mm cartridge case and an empty E&J Brandy bottle, a brand Smith was known to drink.

Circuit Judge Mark Lindsay sent the jury home early Tuesday after prosecutors exhausted their available witnesses. The remainder of the state’s witnesses, from the state medical examiner’s office and state crime lab’s forensics division, are expected to testify when the trial resumes at 9:15 a.m. today.

Police received a call at 10:27 p.m. on April 28, 2019, of a shooting at 234 S. Willow Ave., where they found Kendricks, 36, with a single gunshot wound to the head, according to a police report. Kendricks had managed to get from the yard where he was shot to the street, where he collapsed and was being tended to by friends and family.

Christopher Blackburn told jurors Kendricks had followed Smith toward his car after he was shot.

Eight women and four men make up the primary jury panel hearing the case. The alternates are a man and a woman.