TRIPLE MURDER: Jury selection in capital murder trial has begun, for the first time in 10 years

Defendant allegedly shot three men in a Burlington apartment in 2019

Jury selection has begun for Alamance County's first capital felony trial in a decade involving Durham man Hyquan Johan Parker, a black man charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of three men shot and killed in an apartment at 15 Perry Circle in Burlington on June 30, 2019.

Parker also faces charges of violent habitual offender in Alamance County, according to a notice of return of the 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, Sept. 16, and is expected to continue this week, said Alamance County District Attorney Sean Boone The Alamance News Tuesday.

The trial itself is scheduled to begin Oct. 7, said Boone, who is prosecuting the case along with Alamance County Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Olivier.

– Advertising –

The last capital crime trial in Alamance County was held in 2014 and ended in November 2014 with the conviction of 60-year-old white Robert Dennis Dixon. He was found guilty of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and first-degree burglary in connection with the fatal shooting of his stepmother, then 68-year-old Sara Bright Dixon, in her home on McCray Road in Burlington in November 2007.

Dixon is currently serving a life sentence 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 border. [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 to the newspaper. Jury selection will take place in the superior courtroom on the second floor of the historic Alamance County Courthouse in downtown Graham.

During jury selection on Tuesday, the defendant's attorneys discussed their statistical analysis of the number of black and white potential jurors rejected by the state so far. Parker is represented by attorneys Robert A. Singagliese and Christine Malumphy, who are with the state's Office of the Capital Defender (i.e., Indigent Defense Services) in Durham.

Malumphy told Johnston County Superior Court Judge Tom Lock, who is presiding over Parker's trial in Alamance County Superior Court, on Tuesday that black jurors – of those she said were available – were “twice as likely” to be rejected by the prosecution. Those negotiations took place in the absence of the potential jurors.

Defense motion questions whether there are enough potential black jurors in the jury pool

On the same day that jury selection began, Sept. 16, Parker's attorneys filed a motion to reject a panel of potential jurors, claiming it “does not adequately reflect an adequate cross-section of the community” and potentially violates his rights under the U.S. Constitution and the North Carolina Constitution, according to the court filing. Specifically, the defense argued in its motion that the pool of potential jurors does not adequately reflect the proportion of blacks and Hispanics in the community, claiming, “This underrepresentation is the result of systematic exclusion, not chance.”

The defendant's attorneys requested a new jury, but Parker's court records show that no decision appears to have been made to grant that request in this case.

The defense also filed a motion on Sept. 3 to exclude the death penalty in his upcoming trial on three counts of first-degree murder, arguing that the Eighth and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution prohibit the execution of those with serious mental illnesses. Parker, the attorneys wrote in their motion, “has a serious mental illness” and “neuropsychological testing indicates that he has serious impairments consistent with some form of neurocognitive disorder.”

On September 4, Lock issued an order denying a separate August 2 motion for a continuance for Parker. He wrote that he based his denial on the age of the case, the volume and complexity of the evidence, the length of time he had been involved in the case, previously issued scheduling orders, the schedules of the defendant's experts and the extensive work they had done to that point.

In questioning four potential jurors – three white men and one white woman – on Wednesday morning, Malumphy alluded to the possibility that the triple murder Parker is accused of was related to gang violence.

Background to the case

Parker was charged on July 1, 2019, with shooting three men in the Perry Circle apartment. Investigators later identified the three men 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.

According to court documents, Parker was living at 610 East Geer Street in Durham when he was arrested by Burlington police in July 2019.

Burlington police said at the time that Parker first went to the apartment during the day on June 30 and returned that same evening at around 8:07 p.m., shooting three black men inside.

Parker was taken to the Alamance County Jail on $3 million bail.

The emotional tension surrounding Parker's first appearance in Alamance County Court in July 2019 apparently culminated in an angry outburst by a woman later identified by the Alamance County Sheriff's Office as Josselyn Farrior of 322 Junkiton Road in Durham. Farrior was sentenced to 10 days in jail by an attending District Judge, Durham County District Judge James T. Hill, for contempt of court for causing a disturbance before storming out of the courtroom and causing another disturbance in a hallway.

Jurors will likely learn of the defendant's previous conviction for second-degree murder

The defense's strategy seemed designed to weed out those who might conclude that “the only appropriate punishment is the worst punishment” (namely, death) for a defendant who had previously been convicted of first-degree murder and—based on Malumphy's description to potential jurors—might have been convicted of three counts of first-degree murder.

According to the state Department of Adult Corrections (DAC), Parker was previously convicted of first-degree murder in Durham County in February 2009 and released on parole in February 2016.

Malumphy focused her questions Wednesday morning on the four potential jurors' views on the death penalty, including whether they believe in the biblical concept of “an eye for an eye” and whether they would be willing to impose the death penalty or life without the possibility of parole if Parker is convicted.

By and large, the four potential jurors told Malumphy they did not have enough information to speculate on an appropriate sentence. However, one of the white men said Wednesday morning that he thought a life sentence without parole was “possibly the worst form of punishment.”

Malumphy also repeatedly questioned the four potential jurors Wednesday morning about how much weight they would give to a previous conviction for first-degree murder in determining an appropriate sentence.

One of the white male jurors insisted to Malumphy, “When the case is over, I can't use that as a basis for making a decision on a possible sentence.” But the defense attorney told Lock – who, after overcoming several of Boone's objections, sent all jurors out of the courtroom – that the potential juror did not understand that the jury might be asked to consider Parker's previous conviction for second-degree murder if he is found guilty in one or more of the June 2019 killings in Burlington.

“You have been given a false impression of the law,” Malumphy told Lock in the presence of a total of 16 potential jurors, including four who were seated on the jury for questioning and 12 in the courtroom's public gallery. “I would like to predict at this point what could be considered an aggravating circumstance,” she told the judge.

For his part, Boone told Lock that, out of an excessive amount of caution, he had not anticipated what factors, such as a previous conviction for first-degree murder, the jury would have to consider in reaching a verdict.

Lock told Malumphy: “In this case, the jury can of course take into account that [second-degree murder conviction] and advised her to ask potential jurors whether they might consider a life sentence without parole even if evidence of a previous murder conviction was presented.”

Parker's trial will take place in the upper courtroom at the JB Allen, Jr. Court House in Graham and is expected to last several weeks, Boone told the newspaper Tuesday.

[Story continues below photos.]

Parker was subsequently convicted of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill or inflict serious injury and common robbery in Vance County in February 2018, for which he was paroled in December 2018; and in May 2018 of aggravated possession of a Schedule II controlled substance and minor possession of drug paraphernalia in Durham County, according to the DAC.