Defendant allegedly shot and killed 3 men inside Burlington apartment in 2019
Jury selection has started in what will be the first capital murder trial in Alamance County in a decade, for a Durham man, Hyquan Johan Parker, 31, black, male, who is charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of three men inside an apartment at 15 Perry Circle in Burlington on June 30, 2019.
Parker has also been indicted in Alamance County as a violent habitual felon, based on a notice of a return of the bill of indictment filed in superior court and served on the defendant in open court last week.
Jury selection in the capital murder trial began last Monday, September 16, and is expected to continue through this week, Alamance County district attorney Sean Boone told The Alamance News Tuesday.
The trial itself is scheduled to start on October 7, said Boone, who is prosecuting the case along with Alamance County assistant D.A. Elizabeth Olivier.
The last capital murder trial in Alamance County was held in 2014, resulting in the November 2014 conviction of Robert Dennis Dixon, 60, white, male, who was convicted of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and first-degree burglary in the November 2007 fatal shooting of his stepmother, Sara Bright Dixon, then 68, at her home along McCray Road in Burlington.
Dixon is currently serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole and is currently incarcerated at the Warren Correctional Institute, north of Henderson and about 14 miles south of the Virginia state line. [One of the accomplices in the case, Thomas Clay Friday, agreed to plead guilty in 2013 in exchange for a life sentence; and the so-called “trigger man,” Devon Fields, was found guilty in 2014 of conspiracy to commit felony murder and sentenced to 21 years in prison.]
Meanwhile, as of Wednesday morning, eight jurors had been seated for Parker’s trial, Olivier confirmed for the newspaper. Jury selection is taking place inside the superior court room on the second floor of Alamance County’s Historic Court House in downtown Graham.
During jury selection on Tuesday, the defendant’s attorneys discussed their statistical analysis of the number of prospective black, versus white, jurors who had been stricken by the state so far. Parker is being represented by attorneys Robert A. Singagliese and Christine Malumphy, who are with the state Office of the Capital Defender (i.e., Indigent Defense Services) in Durham.
Malumphy told Tom Lock, a senior resident superior court judge for Johnston County who is presiding over Parker’s trial in Alamance County superior court on Tuesday that black jurors – of those jurors who she said are available – are “twice as likely” to be stricken by the prosecutors. Those arguments took place outside of the presence of any prospective jurors.
Defense motion questions whether enough prospective black jurors included in jury pool
On the same day that jury selection began, September 16, Parker’s attorneys filed a motion to strike a panel of prospective jurors, whom they contended “does not reflect a fair cross-section of the community,” potentially violating his rights under the U.S. and N.C. Constitution, according to the court file. Specifically, the defense argued in its motion that the pool of prospective jurors doesn’t adequately represent the proportion of blacks and Hispanics in the community, asserting, “This underrepresentation is the result of systemic exclusion and not chance.”
The defendant’s attorneys asked that a new pool of jurors be created, but no order granting the motion appears to have been entered in the case, based on Parker’s court files.
The defense also filed a motion on September 3 to preclude the death penalty from his upcoming trial for three counts of first-degree murder, arguing that the eighth and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution forbid the execution of the severely mental ill. Parker, the attorneys wrote in their motion, “has a serious mental illness” and that “neuropsychological testing shows he has some serious impairments arising from some form of neurocognitive disorder.”
On September 4, Lock entered an order denying a separate motion, filed August 2, to continue the trial for Parker, writing that he had based his denial on the age of the case; volume and complexity of the evidence; length of time his attorneys have been involved in the case; scheduling orders previously entered; and the schedules of the defendant’s expert witnesses, as well as the extensive work they had done thus far.
In questioning four potential jurors – three white males and one white female – Wednesday morning, Malumphy alluded to the possibility that the triple homicide of which Parker is accused of committing was gang-related.
Background on the case
Parker was charged on July 1, 2019 with fatally shooting three men inside the apartment on Perry Circle, whom investigators subsequently identified as: Tyrone Brandon Nelson, Jr., then 18, of Perry Circle; Kaseem Devon Zinebalist Peterson, then 27, of Oakes Circle; and Jason Deangelo Williams, then 26, of Floyd Street.
Parker had been living at 610 East Geer Street in Durham when he was arrested by Burlington police in July 2019, according to court documents.
Burlington police said at the time that Parker initially went to the apartment earlier during the day on June 30 and returned around 8:07 p.m. that night, shooting and killing three black males inside.
Parker was placed in the Alamance County jail under a $3 million bond.
The emotional tension surrounding Parker’s first appearance in Alamance County court in July 2019 apparently culminated in an outburst from a woman, later identified by the Alamance County sheriff’s office as Josselyn Farrior of 322 Junkiton Road in Durham. Farrior was held in contempt of court and jailed for 10 days by a visiting district court judge, James T. Hill of Durham County, for creating a disturbance before storming out of the courtroom and sparking another disturbance in a hallway.
Jurors likely to hear about defendant’s prior second-degree murder conviction
The defense’s strategy appeared to center on weeding out those who might conclude that “the only appropriate punishment is the worst punishment” (i.e., death) for a defendant previously convicted of second-degree murder and is, possibly, convicted of three first-degree murders, based on Malumphy’s description to prospective jurors.
Parker was previously convicted of second-degree murder in Durham County in February 2009 and was paroled in February 2016, according to the state Department of Adult Corrections (DAC).
Malumphy focused her questions Wednesday morning on the four prospective jurors’ beliefs about the death penalty – to include whether they believe in the biblical concept of an “eye for an eye” and their willingness to render a death sentence, versus a sentence of life without the possibility of parole, if Parker were to be convicted.
In general, the four prospective jurors told Malumphy they didn’t have enough information to speculate on an appropriate sentence, though one of the white males said Wednesday morning that he thinks life in prison without parole “is possibly the worst form of punishment.”
Malumphy also repeatedly questioned the four prospective jurors Wednesday morning about how much weight they would give to a prior conviction of second-degree murder in determining an appropriate punishment.
One of the white, male jurors insisted to Malumphy, “If that case is done, I can’t use that to make a decision” about a possible sentence. But the defense attorney told Lock – who, after sustaining multiple objections by Boone, sent all of the jurors out of the courtroom – that the potential juror did not understand that the jury may be asked to consider Parker’s prior second-degree murder conviction if he is found guilty in one or more of the June 2019 murders in Burlington.
“They have been given a false impression of the law,” Malumphy told Lock outside the presence of a total of 16 prospective jurors, which included four seated in the jury box for questioning and 12 in the courtroom gallery. “I would like, at this time, to forecast what may be considered as an aggravating factor,” she told the judge.
Boone, for his part, told Lock that, out of an abundance of caution, he had not forecast what factors, such as a prior conviction of second-degree murder, jurors might be asked to consider for sentencing.
Lock told Malumphy, “Clearly in this case, the jury may be allowed to consider that prior [second-degree murder conviction] and advised her to ask prospective jurors whether they could still consider life without parole even if evidence of the prior murder conviction is presented.”
Parker’s trial will be held in the superior courtroom inside the J.B. Allen, Jr. Court House in Graham and is expected to last several weeks, Boone told the newspaper Tuesday.
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Parker was subsequently convicted of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill or inflict serious injury and common-law robbery in Vance County in February 2018, for which he was paroled in December 2018; and felony possession of a Schedule II controlled substance and misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia in Durham County in May 2018, according to the DAC.
