A North Little Rock man set his girlfriend on fire and doused her in gasoline, causing fatal injuries that burned more than 90 percent of her body, after threatening to do so on multiple occasions, prosecutors said at the beginning of Matthew Nichols' capital murder trial Tuesday.
Opening statements began a day after jurors were seated in the trial in Pulaski County Circuit Court of Nichols, 47, who is charged in the May 20, 2013, burning death of 38-year-old Jessie McFadden at the couple's home on Water Street.
In an opening statement Tuesday before Judge Wendell Griffen, prosecutors asked the jury to find Nichols guilty of "burning Ms. Jessie McFadden alive."
In the defense opening, Nichols' attorney Lott Rolfe IV acknowledged Nichols caused McFadden's death. He said the issue at trial is not that but whether the charge of capital murder is the right one because it requires "premeditation and deliberation."
"The facts will show Matthew Nichols is responsible for the death of Jessie McFadden," Rolfe told the panel, saying Nichols acted "out of anger and sudden impulse" and not a prearranged plan. "It does not rise to the level of capital murder."
Prosecutors, however, described a different story. Deputy prosecutor Jeanna Sherrill said Nichols' niece would testify during the trial that he told her two weeks before McFadden's death that he would "burn [McFadden] up and the house too" if she threw him out of the residence. Another witness will testify she heard the same threat in the background of a phone call with McFadden.
Sherrill said the jury would also hear from a friend of Nichols' who was there the day McFadden was killed and will recount walking up on the porch, looking inside and seeing Nichols "setting Ms. McFadden on fire" and pouring gas from a can.
A neighbor from two houses down, meanwhile, will also describe the scene, Sherill said.
"She's going to tell you she looked in that house and she saw Mr. Nichols pouring that gas can and flames coming up," Sherill said. "At that point, he noticed what it was he was pouring that gas on. It was a person."
Testimony began after the opening statements. The trial is scheduled to last through Thursday.
Read Tuesday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for more on this story.