The Arkansas Court of Appeals on Wednesday denied a request from a man convicted of murder who contended that testimony by an expert at his 2015 trial exceeded the limits and qualifications of the expert. Rashune Raglon was convicted of second-degree murder in the Nov. 28, 2013, shooting death of Dametrick McDaniel and sentenced as an habitual offender to 65 years in prison.
In his appeal, Raglon contended that Associate State Medical Examiner Dr. Frank Peretti was not an expert on narcotic drugs and their effects, and was not qualified to talk about the effects of K2 and PCP. Raglon also contended that now-retired Circuit Judge Berlin C. Jones erred when he allowed the testimony. Testifying in his own defense during the trial in 2015, Raglon said he shot McDaniel in the head but said the shooting was an accident.
The case began when police were sent to the Beechwood Apartments at 2600 S. Beech St. to check the welfare of a child; when they entered an open door, police saw McDaniel on the floor with a gunshot wound to the head. McDaniel was pronounced dead at the scene.
Raglon was identified as a suspect through a witness, Brandon McClatchie, who testified in court that he had given McDaniel and Raglon some K2 and allowed them to sell it from his apartment. He also testified that he, McDaniel and Raglon were sitting on an air mattress playing an X-Box game when Raglon shot McDaniel.
After the shooting, McClatchie and Raglon left the apartments in a car with another man, and Raglon threw the shotgun out of the vehicle over a bridge railing, where it was found a day after the shooting. Raglon fled the city and was arrested in Kansas City in December 2013. In his testimony, Peretti, who performed the autopsy on McDaniel, said he drug tested McDaniel but said the crime lab did not test for K2, adding that K2 is legal in most states and you can buy it over the counter at some stores.
“I have seen the effects of K2 on people the last several years,” Peretti said. “The people using the drugs become psychotic. They go into rages. I have seen people jump off bridges and through plate glass windows. It is a really bad drug.”
Attorneys for Raglon claimed in the appeal that there was no evidence to indicate that Peretti was testifying from his expert, scientific knowledge about how people react to K2, and that the opinion had no scientific basis in knowledge, skill, training or experience. They also contended that his testimony about people going into a rage negated manslaughter or negligent homicide, both options the jury was given. Writing for the court, Chief Judge Rita Gruber said, “there was strong evidence to dissuade the jury form delivering a verdict on lesser included offenses of manslaughter and negligent homicide.”