Rickey Howard, Jr. v. State of Arkansas

── Rickey Howard, Jr. v. State of Arkansas ── Court: Court of Appeals of Arkansas Date: April 08, 2026 Category: General Cite as 2026 Ark. App. 215 ARKANSAS COURT OF APPEALS DIVISION IV No. CR-25-358 RICKEY HOWARD, JR. Opinion Delivered April 8, 2026 APPELLANT APPEAL FROM THE JEFFERSON COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT V. [NO. 35CR-22-98] HONORABLE ALEX GUYNN, JUDGE STATE OF ARKANSAS AFFIRMED APPELLEE N. MARK KLAPPENBACH, Chief Judge Appellant, Rickey Howard, Jr., was convicted of the first-degree murder of Calvin Kirklin. Howard was also convicted of aggravated robbery, committing terrorist acts, and firearm enhancements. Howard appeals, challenging (1) the sufficiency of the evidence to corroborate the accomplice testimony and (2) the admission into evidence of a video recorded on a cell phone. We affirm. In the early-morning hours of January 8, 2022, Mr. Kirklin was shot to death as he sat in the driver’s seat of his vehicle at an apartment complex in Pine Bluff. A car belonging to Roderick Marks, Jr., had pulled alongside Kirklin’s car, and three male occupants exited Marks’s car and approached Kirklin’s vehicle. Moments later, Kirklin was shot multiple times. Spent shells were recovered from the scene and .40-caliber bullets were recovered from Kirklin’s body.  A Pine Bluff police detective testified about his investigation. The detective viewed security-camera video depicting Marks’s Chrysler 200, identified by its license plate, at the scene and driving away. Three initial suspects were interviewed and arrested: Roderick Marks, Jr.; Rahn Clay, Jr.; and Steven Grady. Grady subsequently contacted the police through his counsel to voluntarily turn over a cell-phone video recording he took of the murder, which was recorded from inside the Chrysler 200. The detective stated that Grady gave the police a statement identifying Howard as a person in the car that night. The cell-phone video was played for the jury. The video confirms that three black males were standing by the driver’s side of the victim’s car just before the gunfire began. A male voice is heard saying that they were going to rob the man. After shots were fired, a female voice can be heard calling out, “Where Rickey go?” A male voice is then heard saying, “Rick—come on, cuz.” Shakirah Stennis was identified as another participant in the crime. Howard was Stennis’s live-in boyfriend and is the father of Stennis’s two young children. Stennis identified the people in the cell-phone video, confirming Howard was one of the three gunmen. She said they were all intoxicated that night. Just before Stennis’s arrest, Howard learned that the police were looking for him, and he left the state; he was found two years later and brought back to Arkansas.1 1 Marks, Clay, Grady, Stennis, and Howard faced charges in separate cases for capital murder, aggravated robbery, and committing terroristic acts. In the charging document against Howard, all four of the other defendants are named as accomplices. The charging document was read aloud to the jury at the beginning of trial. The four other defendants 2  Marks and Stennis testified that Howard was a participant in the crimes and said they were all in the car together when they encountered Kirklin. They also identified Howard as a participant, as depicted in the Grady video. Stennis said that in the video, she was in the back seat; Grady was in the front seat recording the video; and Marks, Clay, and Howard were the ones who got out and stood next to Kirklin’s car. Stennis said Marks, Clay, and Howard all had guns. Marks admitted that he (Mark