Defense subpoenas judge, seeks dismissal over lost evidence in 1991 Miller County murder case

Lawyers for a Texarkana man charged with killing his wife in 1991 have subpoenaed the circuit judge who once presided over the case to testify for the defense at a hearing Tuesday. They are also asking the court to throw out the murder charge, arguing that the state has lost or ruined the evidence over 35 years.

Michael Wayne Letterman, 60, is charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of Billie Jean Letterman, 21, at the couple’s home at Highway 82 and County Road 78 on Aug. 12, 1991. He was arrested in October 2025, 34 years after the shooting. His jury trial in Miller County Circuit Court is set to begin Nov. 16, according to court records in case 46CR-25-640.

Judge subpoenaed

A subpoena issued Oct. 30 at the request of defense attorney Luther Sutter orders Circuit Judge Carlton D. Jones to appear at 9 a.m. Tuesday “to testify on behalf of the defendant.” The hearing is in Division 3 of Miller County Circuit Court, which is sitting at the Miller County Sheriff’s Office on East Street. An affidavit filed Monday says a defense investigator served Jones in his chambers at about 3:30 p.m. Oct. 30.

The filings do not say what the defense wants to ask him. When Letterman was arrested last year, the sheriff’s office said investigators had presented their findings to Prosecuting Attorney Connie Mitchell and Jones before the arrest warrant was issued.

Jones presided over the case until Aug. 10, when he signed an order disqualifying himself “on motion of the Defendant” under the Arkansas Code of Judicial Conduct. The case was then reassigned by random drawing to Division 3. At a June 15 hearing, the defense tried to call the elected prosecutor to explain why the charge took 35 years. Jones refused, ruling that the investigator who wrote the arrest affidavit could answer that, according to a transcript the defense filed.

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What happened in 1991

The arrest affidavit, written by Miller County sheriff’s Detective Jeremy Poole in October 2025, summarizes the original reports. Deputies who responded to the home found Billie Jean Letterman on the living room floor with a gunshot wound behind her right ear. A .22-caliber magnum revolver with one spent round lay on the floor. She died the next day.

Letterman told investigators the couple had been arguing about a camping trip and unpaid bills. He said he threw the pistol on the floor and dared her to shoot him. He said she picked it up and began to turn it toward herself, and that it went off as he reached for it, according to the affidavit.

A State Crime Laboratory test-firing in November 1991 put the muzzle six to 12 inches from her head. The lead investigator, Sgt. Donald Ray Nix, wrote that month that it was “unlikely that the victim could have fired the weapon.” The autopsy listed the manner of death as undetermined.

The case was reopened in 1996 and 1997 and closed again without charges, the defense says. Poole wrote that the stippling test results “finally returned” from the crime lab in July 2023. In the affidavit, he concluded from the muzzle distance, the gun’s length and her height of 4 feet 11 inches that she could not have shot herself.

The affidavit also quotes Letterman’s former wife, who told investigators in 1991 and again in 2025 that he had been violent with her. The defense has asked the judge to keep evidence of his alleged conduct toward other women away from the jury.

Daughter says she saw the shooting

The state’s eyewitness is Billie Jean Letterman’s daughter, Ashley Myers, who was 6 in 1991. Testifying at the June hearing, she said she was on the couch watching a movie with her mother when an argument turned physical. She said she saw Letterman take a gun from a holster on the wall and hold it to the right side of her mother’s head while the two struggled, and then the gun went off.

She testified that no officer questioned her that night and that she has told people what she saw “my entire life.” The case was the subject of the 2022 podcast “Burden”, which she said she took part in. The 1991 reports say the children were in bed in another room.

Jones denied a defense motion to exclude her testimony and found her competent to testify, leaving her credibility for the jury. On Oct. 22 the defense moved to exclude the state’s trauma and domestic violence expert. The state has said the expert would explain why it can take eyewitnesses longer to come forward.

Lost evidence

Two defense motions to dismiss are pending, and neither has been ruled on. The first, filed in May and amended in September, argues that the 35-year delay has cost Letterman a fair defense. It notes that Nix and the state medical examiner who did the autopsy both died in 2018, and that the crime lab examiner who did the trace work has also died.

The second, filed Oct. 22, relies on Poole’s own testimony at the June hearing. According to the transcript quoted in the motion, Poole testified that:

• there is no continuous chain of custody for the evidence, and for the gun “there does not appear to be one”
• some property records are missing
• the preserved tissue from the entrance wound is “not testable” because human skin breaks down over time
• “from what the reports state,” the gunshot residue sample had been compromised by hospital cleaning

The 1991 reports also say Letterman wiped his hands with towels hospital staff gave him before a gunshot residue sample could be taken from him, according to the affidavit.

The motion also cites a March 2018 letter from then-Sheriff Jackie Runion, written in response to a records request about the case. Runion said the material was in storage and “not easily located with reasonable effort.” The defense asks the court to dismiss the charge or, failing that, bar any evidence that depends on what the state did not preserve.

The online docket shows no written response from the state to either dismissal motion. Mitchell and Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Jon Beck represented the state at the June hearing.

Prosecutors amended the charge in June to add a firearm enhancement. First-degree murder carries 10 to 40 years or life in prison, and the enhancement allows up to 15 more years. Letterman’s bond was set at $350,000, according to a defense motion filed in December seeking to have it reduced.

Letterman is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.