Nicholson found guilty in McKinney murder

A Faulkner County jury found 22-year-old Justin Nicholson of Conway guilty of second-degree murder Friday evening.

The jury sentenced Nicholson to 30 years in the Arkansas Department of Correction, the maximum prison term for second-degree murder, and ordered to pay a $10,000 fine.

Nicholson was alleged to have played a part in beating 20-year-old Justin "Hopper" McKinney to death in August 2007. He and co-defendant Timothy King, 23, also of Conway, were arrested the day after the murder. In April, King was found guilty by a Faulkner County jury of second-degree murder and sentenced to 30 years.

Arguments from the defense, represented by Little Rock attorneys Blake Hendrix and Erin Cassinelli Couch largely involved the possibility that Nicholson had acted in driving McKinney to a remote area of the Lollie Bottoms with the intention to beat him and that co-defendant King bore a greater portion of responsibility for the murder. During questioning by Faulkner County Sheriff's Office investigators after their arrests, both men admitted to delivering blows to McKinney.

"Did Justin (Nicholson) do something wrong?" Hendrix asked the jury in his closing arguments. "Yes. He committed a battery or he was an accessory to battery ... he went out there and beat the kid up."

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In his closing arguments, 20th Judicial District Prosecuting Attorney Marcus Vaden told the jury that though Nicholson said in an interview with investigators that McKinney was alive when he last saw him, neither he nor King called for an ambulance or for police, and testimonies from those who spoke with him after the murder but before his arrest indicate that Nicholson told at least two people that he may have been wanted for murder but did not say anything to deny the crime or explain his involvement until his arrest.

As the prosecution and defense addressed the jury after the verdict had been read but before the jury again deliberated on sentencing, the defense called two men who claimed to have known Nicholson for most of his life.

Len Harris, an instructor at Wonderview High School in Hattieville, Ark., while Nicholson attended, said he was a good student who never got into trouble. Bob Holyfield, who said he was a missionary assigned to the Arkansas Department of Correction and was president of the Wonderview School Board while Nicholson attended, said the murder was out of Nicholson's character and that it seemed he had become involved with a bad group of friends in Conway.

20th Judicial District Prosecuting Attorney Marcus Vaden, in response, told the jury that "if he's been a good boy all his life and had a short period where he wasn't, then guess what, somebody's never going to get to 21 or 22 years old."

Both Nicholson and King were charged with first-degree murder, indicating that prosecutors and law enforcement believed that both drove McKinney to the remote area with the intention of murdering him. In selecting the lesser charge of second-degree murder, the jury found, as was the case in King's trial, that Nicholson acted to create conditions likely to cause death and demonstrating an indifference to the value of life, but did not know to a certainty that he was causing the death of McKinney.

(Staff writer Joe Lamb can be reached at 505-1238 or by E-mail at joe.lamb@thecabin.net. Send us your news at www.thecabin.net/submit.)