Share This Article
An attorney for Steven Manson Jr. wants his rape trial moved out of Marion County and is asking a judge to bar a forensic interviewer from repeating a 10-year-old’s allegations to a jury.
The requests surfaced Tuesday during a hearing before Circuit Judge Andrew S. Bailey and in a motion filed the same morning. Manson Jr.’s trial in the case, 45CR-25-118, is set for July 13, with proceedings expected to begin July 14.
The motion, filed by defense attorney Eugene Clifford, asks the court to keep forensic interviewer with Grandma’s House and Nancy Abbott, who was present for the interview, from telling the jury what the child said. The dispute is over how the child’s account reaches the jury. The state intends to present it through the adults who interviewed her, while the defense argues the jury should hear it from the child, who it says is available and willing to testify.
If the motion succeeds, the state would have to put the child on the stand to relay her own account, rather than have it told to the jury by the adults she disclosed to.
Clifford’s central argument is that Arkansas law does not allow the interviewer to stand in for the child. The state’s child-hearsay rule covers statements by children under 10, the motion says, and the child here was exactly 10 at the time of the interview. Because she can testify herself, the filing argues, no exception lets an interviewer repeat her account.
The motion also asks the court to bar the interviewer from telling jurors the child was truthful, credible, consistent, not coached or not lying. It cites a line of Arkansas appellate cases holding that such testimony invades the jury’s job of deciding who to believe.
In a separate part of the motion, the defense seeks to block testimony that the child’s delay in disclosing the abuse is consistent with genuine abuse. Clifford argues that once such testimony is tied to this child, it becomes improper bolstering.
Clifford also told the court he intends to file a motion to move the trial out of the county, arguing that the sheriff’s releases and the coverage around them had prejudiced potential jurors. He said the releases pointed to Manson Jr.’s “previous criminal history,” the “credibility of witnesses” and his status as a registered sex offender.
Clifford said he had begun gathering affidavits from county residents to support the request and estimated that 10 to 15 percent of potential jurors in the county were aware of the releases. “We can’t stop the press from doing what they do,” he said, “but it is a major concern for us.”
The Marion County Sheriff’s Office issued two releases tied to the cases. The first, on Dec. 5, announced Manson Jr.’s arrest in the December incidents. The second, on March 16, announced the arrests of all three Mansons in the March case.
Both releases described the charges. The prior Illinois conviction and Level II sex offender status they reference are public record under state sex offender registration law, and the December release tied the conviction to a firearms charge against Manson Jr. Neither release went beyond information already public by law.
Neither release addressed the credibility of any witness. The fuller account of the family’s history and the allegations against them appeared in news coverage of the cases, not in the sheriff’s releases. The Observer’s reporting on that history was gathered independently, including through interviews and a review of court records in other states.
Sheriff Gregg Alexander declined to release further information about the case in a public statement and has not answered the Observer’s questions about the family.
Deputy Prosecuting Attorney John Russo told the court he had anticipated a venue request and had already weighed the issue. He offered to hold the trial in Jasper but pushed back on the need to move it, saying he believed Marion County’s jury pool was large enough to seat a fair and impartial jury.
Bailey expressed frustration with the timing of the planned venue request, coming weeks before the July 13 trial, and directed the attorneys to work the matter out. Clifford asked the court to set another hearing before trial.
The other two defendants in the case also appeared Tuesday.
In the cases against Steven Manson Sr., Russo told the court the state had documentation indicating the elder Manson has dementia and had moved to have him evaluated to verify it. Russo filed that motion May 1 in cases 45CR-25-82 and 45CR-26-14, citing an Aug. 10, 2025, state Department of Human Services letter that placed Manson Sr. in a care tier that can reflect a dementia diagnosis. The request is unusual because prosecutors, rather than defense attorneys, rarely seek a competency exam of their own defendant.
The case against co-defendant Dezarae Kennedy was reset to a later date, with attorneys citing the timing of Manson Jr.’s trial.
Background
Manson Jr., 35, of Yellville, faces two separate rape cases. The case set for July 13 involves the child; a second case, involving an 18-year-old, is scheduled for later.
He is a Level II registered sex offender who was convicted in Illinois of aggravated criminal sexual abuse and served seven years in prison. Under Arkansas law, a person convicted of raping a child under 14 who has a prior conviction for a qualifying violent felony must be sentenced to life in prison without parole.
The child case began in December 2025, when Manson Jr. was charged with raping a girl under 14 at the family’s home on Marion County Road 8054. The child was forensically interviewed at Grandma’s House, a child advocacy center in Mountain Home, according to court records.
In a related case, he was charged with kidnapping, terroristic threatening and possession of a firearm by a felon after he allegedly threatened the child and an adult woman with a shotgun. The state moved to try that case together with the child rape case, but Bailey denied the request May 6, finding the offenses were not part of a single scheme or plan. The two will be tried separately.
The second rape case stems from March 2026, when Manson Jr. was charged with raping a young woman at the same home while out on bond and wearing an ankle monitor. Prosecutors charged Manson Sr. and Kennedy as co-defendants in that case.
Prior Observer reporting, drawn from court records in multiple states and interviews with people who knew the family, has described Kennedy as a victim of grooming by Manson Jr. since she was 15. An Illinois neighbor warned the Marion County Sheriff’s Office about the family for months before the most serious charges were filed.
The Manson prosecutions span multiple north Arkansas counties and remain pending. The Observer will continue to report on the case as it moves toward trial.
Editor’s note: The news coverage cited in the defense’s venue request includes reporting by the Mountain Home Observer. The Observer’s reporting on these cases has been based on independent work, including interviews with people connected to the family, a review of court records in multiple states, and filings obtained from the public Marion County court docket. Apart from the sheriff’s public arrest releases, no documents or information were provided to the Observer by the prosecutor or the sheriff.
