By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — A man who was 17 when he was arrested and charged with capital murder and aggravated robbery in a fatal shooting outside a North Little Rock Wal-Mart store cannot have his case transferred to juvenile court, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
The court upheld a Pulaski County circuit judge’s decision denying a motion by Joshua Leallen Lofton, now 19, to transfer his case to juvenile court. Lofton is charged in the July 22, 2007, shooting death of Dean Worden, 40, of Jacksonville, in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart Supercenter on McCain Boulevard.
Lofton told police that he and two friends drove to the store on that date, and after he got out of the car he tried to take a purse from a woman in the parking lot. The woman would not give him her purse, so he hit her in the head with a handgun and ran back to the car, he said.
Lofton said people were standing in front of the vehicle, so he told them to move and fired his gun into the air twice to make them move. He told police he did not learn until later that one of the people in the crowd had been shot in the neck and died at the scene.
Prosecutors charged Lofton as an adult under a state law that allows juveniles to be charged as adults for certain serious and violent offenses.
Lofton argued that his case should be transferred to juvenile court because the shooting was not premeditated; the state did not present sufficient evidence to establish the seriousness of the offense; he lacked sophistication or maturity; and transferring the case would give him access to rehabilitation programs for juveniles.
In its opinion Thursday, the state Supreme Court said Circuit Judge Willard Proctor’s denial of Lofton’s motion was supported by clear and convincing evidence.
“There was evidence presented … to substantiate the serious and violent nature of the charges,” Justice Jim Gunter wrote.
Lofton’s claim that he fired the gun into the air is inconsistent with footage from a Wal-Mart surveillance video, the court said. The video shows that Lofton’s arm was “extended toward a group of people,” not pointed in the air, Gunter wrote.
The court also said that although Proctor acknowledged that Lofton possesses “borderline intellectual function,” statements by Lofton about his extensive drug and alcohol use showed he is “mature for his age.”
Gunter also wrote that although rehabilitation programs are available though juvenile court, Proctor was not required to give more weight to that fact than to other facts in the case.
