(Stillwater, Okla.) — A Payne County judge refused Friday to allow a confessed killer to withdraw his guilty plea to first-degree murder in the beating and stomping death of a Cushing woman whom he met in a downtown Cushing bar.
Two weeks after 23-year-old Benjamin Joel Andrew Littlesun of Cushing was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility to parole for killing 45-year-old Ava M. King, the ex-convict wrote a letter to District Judge Phillip Corley.
Littlesun wrote in his letter that he was withdrawing his guilty plea — which the judge refused to allow him to do on Friday.
The judge told Littlesun in court Friday that when he pleaded guilty on July 6, “You indicated you understood everything, the plea agreement. I thoroughly inquired of you what you did. You indicated you killed the victim.”
District Attorney Tom Lee added, “The court did go over everything,” including Littlesun’s constitutional rights. “The court specifically asked if he understood the plea agreement. (His) attorney indicated in court he was competent.”
The judge emphasized to Littlesun, who stood before him shackled in a belly chain with leg irons, “I thoroughly inquired of your competency. You admitted you killed this individual. The court believed you were competent. The court sentenced you to the plea agreement, which removed the death penalty.”
Before overruling Littlesun’s attempt to withdraw his guilty plea, the judge said he was appointing Sarah Kennedy of Perry to represent Littlesun if he decided to appeal the decision.
After the ruling, the district attorney told KUSH, “The court was certainly correct in denying his motion.” In court documents, the prosecutor had urged the judge to deny Littlesun’s attempt to withdraw his guilty plea.
The victim’s relatives — who told KUSH that they supported the plea bargain — were not in court Friday.
The murdered woman’s body was found by Cushing resident John Sheridan the morning after she was beaten and stomped in an alley behind the Cushing tag agency.
Cushing Police Officer Carson Watts, who was called to the scene at 7:30 a.m. Dec. 2, 2011, said that he saw a female lying in the alley nude from the waist down, with two shirts on, both pulled up.
Watts testified in the preliminary hearing that she had such severe facial trauma he couldn’t recognize a face. He said he felt a slight pulse.
“I said, ‘maam, maam,’ and her head moved to the left. I asked, ‘maam, maam, can you tell me what happened?’ Her head moved one more time, but not again,” after that, Watts testified.
The victim was taken by emergency medical personnel to the Cushing hospital where she was pronounced dead.
Later that day, Littlesun was arrested on an outstanding Creek County warrant by Cushing Police Officer Matt Piatt who spotted him walking in front of the Wilshire Inn, according to court testimony.
Littlesun was interviewed at the Cushing Police Department that same day by Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation Agent Richard Brown, who testified Littlesun said, “him and a cousin of his decided to go to the Buckhorn Bar and drink.”
Littlesun said that he did not know King and that when he left the bar, she said she needed a ride home, the OSBI agent testified in the preliminary hearing.
“He said he went to his pickup. He said they drank a bottle of alcohol. He said she removed her clothes and started having sex. He said she said she can’t do this. She exits the vehicle still naked from the waist down,” according to Littlesun, the OSBI agent testified.
“He said that he caught up with her about Cleveland Street and offered her a ride home. He said she slapped him and spit in his face. He said he punched her twice. He said he took his foot and stomped her 20 to 25 times about her face.
“He said he thought her breathing was unusual. Her chest was going in. He said he went out of the alley. He said he ran back to the bar, got his cousin and they left.
“He said he kept her (King’s) driver’s license. He thought he’d give it back to her later.
“He disclosed that the boots he was wearing he threw on top of a church in Cushing,” where according to testimony they were later found. He said that clothing was put in a dumpster, the OSBI agent testified.
The OSBI agent testified “I was advised prints were lifted from the scene that matched Mr. Littlesun’s.”
Cushing Police dispatcher/jailer Richard Thompson testified in the preliminary hearing that when he booked Littlesun into the city jail shortly before 6 p.m. on Dec. 2, 2011, he found an ID that belonged to Ava King,” which he showed to Officer Piatt.
About three and one-half months before Littlesun was charged in the Cushing slaying, he pleaded guilty to placing a body fluid on a government employee while he was a prisoner in Lincoln County, court records show.
For that 2011 crime, Littlesun was given a two-year sentence, all suspended except 30 days in jail, as part of a plea bargain in which he also pleaded guilty to public intoxication.
Two years before the Cushing slaying, Littlesun was charged in Creek County with bringing contraband into the jail, which was dismissed since he was already in state prison.
Littlesun had been out of prison for 15 months when he was charged in the Cushing woman’s slaying, state Department of Corrections records show.
He had served less than nine months for possession of a stolen vehicle in Drumright in 2008 and possession of a stolen vehicle in Cushing in 2009, DOC records show.
Littlesun has a long history of substance abuse, according to an Offender Accountability Plan prepared in 2009 under the Delayed Sentencing Program For Young Adults in his Cushing stolen vehicle case.
***
