McCarthy: Case Against Little 'Difficult, Circumstantial'

The case against Keith D. Little was a “difficult and circumstantial” one for prosecutors made all the more challenging when the state’s best piece of evidence was disallowed by a judge, said Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy following the conviction of Keith D. Little Wednesday evening.

Little was found guilty of first-degree murder in the killing of his supervisor, Roosevelt Brockington, Jr., in Suburban Hospital’s basement boiler room Jan. 1. Both men worked there.

Speaking with reporters Wednesday evening, McCarthy said the state sought to stitch dozens of pieces of circumstantial evidence together to create a picture for jurors of the events of Jan. 1 – Jan. 5 that pointed to Little’s guilt. But minutes before opening statements were set to go forward, prosecutors suffered a blow when Judge Marielsa A. Bernard Little was found washing in scalding hot, chemically-treated water and dumping in the trash days after the murder.

“This was always a hard case,” McCarthy said. “This was a tough, circumstantial case. Taking a piece of evidence out of the case that standing alone as your best piece of evidence factors into the likelihood of a conviction.”

McCarthy praised prosecutors Robert Hill and George Simms, III, along with staff at the state’s attorney’s office who stayed late into the evening during the trial determining the best way to question the state’s expert forensic biologist, Erin Farr, following the ruling that she could not voice her opinion that the brown stain on the glove was human blood. “We rallied to help form some of those questions – ‘Okay, the judge has said we can’t say this. What can we say?”

"In a 'CSI' world, it’s better to say to jurors, we have a scientific test, and it’s blood,” McCarthy said.

Hill, who argued in closing statements that the stain was, in fact, Brockington’s blood, told reporters he attempted to use the stain’s coloring, its location on the glove, and the fact that Brockington’s DNA was concentrated heavily on the stain on the outside of the glove to help prove the point to jurors.

Throughout the trial, the defense sought to prove that the hospital’s basement boiler room was not as inaccessible as the state argued, and that multiple people could have had access to the boiler room that day. They also argued that police ran into “dead ends” and didn’t conduct a thorough investigation, pointing out items of evidence left at the scene that weren’t swabbed for DNA and calling a witness to the stand who saw a man who didn’t match Little’s description walking away from the hospital the morning of the murder.

Simms countered the police combed through hundreds of hours of surveillance footage and interviewed “scores if not hundreds” of witnesses. “The investigation the police department did in this case was excellent,” Simms said.

Prosecutors also discussed a disturbing piece of evidence found at the scene – the twelve-inch knife used as the murder weapon, discovered lodged in Brockington’s neck, which bore a swastika. McCarthy said the swastika was a “plant” – evidence of Little’s “guile” in attempting to point the investigation away from him.

Prosecutors moved several months before the trial to present the jury with information about Little’s 2006 murder acquittal in Washington, D.C. Little faced trial there for the 2003 killing of a co-worker.

The judge denied the motion.

The previous acquittal “was in the back of my mind the entire trial,” Hill said.

In both cases, according to Hill and Simms, Little had been accused of killing a co-worker at his workplace.

Public defenders Ronald Gottlieb and Adam Harris didn’t comment after the trial. Jurors also declined comment. Following the trial, Brockington’s family said Brockington was a who didn’t deserve the fate that befell him.

“We’re relieved in the sense that this man has finally been held accountable for taking away another human life,” McCarthy said. “We are safer with this man behind bars.”