An Orleans Parish jury late Monday found 18-year-old John Honore guilty of second-degree murder in last year's brutal carjacking and dragging death of 73-year-old Linda Frickey, a crime that horrified the city.
The one-day trial and jury deliberations were colored by an early admission from Honore's defense attorney, who told the jurors that the teenager had indeed perpetrated the killing. Honore faces a mandatory life prison term with a chance at parole after 25 years. The jury deliberated for about four hours before finding Honore guilty as charged. He is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 12.
Prosecutors with District Attorney Jason Williams’ office charged four teenagers as adults with second-degree murder in Frickey’s death. But after guilty pleas last week from three of them, only Honore stood accused in a truncated trial that began with the admission, featured testimony from six witnesses and concluded within seven hours of its commencement.
Briniyah Baker, 17, Lenyra Theophile, 16, and Mar'Qel Curtis, 16, who were each indicted with second-degree murder along with Honore, pleaded guilty on Nov. 20 to attempted manslaughter for their roles in the fatal carjacking. They were sentenced without delay to 20 years in prison.
The trial on Monday sparked to a start with Honore’s attorney telling the jury that his client, then 17, had committed “terrible” acts against the elderly woman on March 21, 2022, in an attempt to steal her silver Nissan Kicks from where she sat parked on Bienville Street.
“He did it. OK? He did it,” said the attorney, William Boggs, before thrusting into focus the main question left for the jury: Whether Honore, who Boggs described as an underdeveloped, underprivileged youth, deserved to be locked away for life at Angola’s prison.
“I am going to come to you and say, ‘Let’s not throw away another life,’” Boggs told the jury.
A heinous crime
According to prosecutors, the four teenagers conspired to steal Frickey’s SUV, each with roles to play in the carjacking. Honore served as the lead aggressor and getaway driver, said Assistant District Attorney Matthew Derbes, who heads the office's homicide unit.
Honore pepper sprayed and punched Frickey, Derbes told the jurors. He stomped on her face when she fell to the pavement, the prosecutor said. Derbes demonstrated the violence by slamming his foot into the courtroom’s carpeted floor with such force the vibrations could be felt several feet away.
Then Honore got into the vehicle and drove, he said. Frickey, tangled in the driver’s seatbelt, was dragged alongside the SUV for the length of nearly two football fields.
From her front yard on Bienville Street, Leanne Mascar watched as a mannequin flapped on the side of a vehicle, she told the jurors.
“Then I heard this voice: ‘Let me go,’” Mascar said.
Honore was “trying to dislodge this person like a piece of trash had stuck to the car,” she said.
He drove the vehicle over a curb. There, a utility pole cable ripped Frickey’s arm from her body. Mascar said she ran to Frickey, who was awake, face up, her clothes ripped from her body.
“My first thought was where is all the blood?” Mascar testified. “There was no blood.”
She covered Frickey with a pink and white sheet. With her husband, Marc, and several others who had gathered, Mascar prayed over Frickey. “Time was going so slowly,” Mascar recalled.
It would take emergency workers 20 minutes to arrive to the scene. By then, Frickey was dead.
Litany of injuries
According to forensic pathologist Erin O’Sullivan, Frickey suffered fractured ribs, vertebrae and collarbone, a torn aorta, and head bleeding. Many of the injuries could have killed her, O’Sullivan said.
New Orleans police recovered the SUV about two miles away, testified Rayell Johnson, a New Orleans Police Department homicide detective. Inside, they found an ear bud that, when tested, revealed Honore’s DNA.
By then, Honore was in custody: His mother, Elyria Chambliss, identified her son and Theophile, his girlfriend, after local media released street camera footage of the carjacking. Inside Honore’s home, police found the clothing captured on the videos, Johnson told jurors.
Parents of Baker and Curtis also identified their children to police.
On Monday, Boggs questioned why the girls, charged with the same offense as Honore, were allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge. In a court notice filed on Friday, Honore admitted his guilt in a handwritten letter and asked prosecutors to let him plead guilty to a manslaughter charge. They declined.
“Do you see any of those girls … drive off in the car and refuse to stop?” Derbes asked Johnson.
“No,” he replied.
Mom testifies
Chambliss testified as the sole witness for Honore, after the teenager instructed his attorney not to call his father to testify, after the elder Honore was removed from the courtroom following an outburst.
Chambliss said that she surrendered her son to police because it was the right thing to do. Asked by Boggs how she felt knowing her son faced a life sentence, she quietly replied: “Bad.”
In his closing argument Monday afternoon, Boggs described Honore as a child too “dumb” to commit the carjacking, noting that the teenager had tried to roust Frickey from the vehicle with pepper spray.
“You don’t go up to someone in a car, who’s in a seatbelt, and spray them in the face with mace,” Boggs said. “How are they going to get out? They can’t see.”
As he spoke, a female juror’s eyes darted from Boggs to Honore, who fidgeted with a water bottle, his tie, his fingers against his lips.
“What this means is they are youths. They’re dumb. They don’t know what they’re doing,” Boggs argued.
He also blamed parental and community failures for raising up a youth with too few options. Still, he admitted his defense relied on the mercy of the jury.
“Sometimes idiot children do awful things,” he said. “But it doesn’t mean that we throw away that child.”
Derbes, who prosecuted the case with Assistant District Attorney Forrest Ladd, argued the jury's decision was simple.
“It goes without saying that … this probably would not have happened had he have had a better upbringing. And yes, those are awful, awful things. But it does not change the law.”
