In November 2010, Keith D. Little’s boss reprimanded him for being late to his job as maintenance worker at Suburban Hospital.
In January 2011, a colleague found Little washing up gloves and mask near the site in the Bethesda health center’s basement boiler room where their boss was stabbed to death a few days after the killing.
A jury is charged with deciding whether that scolding was the motive for a violent murder, or whether Roosevelt Brockington Jr. did his job by evaluating his employee, and Little was just doing his by cleaning up.
Those are the two views of the case against Little, 50, that prosecutors and defense attorneys offered during opening statements Tuesday at his first-degree murder trial in Montgomery County Circuit Court. Prosecutors say Little killed Brockington, 40, by stabbing him more than 70 times in his face, neck, shoulders chest and back on New Year’s Day.
“The murder in this case was personal. The murder in this case was violent. The murder in this case was committed by a person who worked at Suburban Hospital,” prosecutor George Simms said. “There’s no other way.”
Simms said Little was upset because Brockington switched Little’s schedule when he found out Little lied about his reason for a change in his work hours, scolded him for being late and that the reprimand made Little ineligible for a raise.
Simms recounted for the jury how another worker saw Little washing gloves and a ski mask in chemical water, then throw away the items, on Jan. 5. Those steps, Simms said, were “the actions of a guilty person.”
But defense attorney Ronald Gottlieb countered that Little did not commit the slaying, arguing that “there was no hatred or animosity” between his client and Brockington. No evidence links Little to killing, and cleaning was his job, Gottlieb said.
“Mr. Little is doing nothing more than cleaning up the work station he’s assigned to clean,” he said.
Gottlieb sought to show that prosecutors jumped to conclusions in charging Little with the crime. He read a letter Brockington wrote to an employee fired in 2010, warning the worker that he would be laid off if he continued missing work. The major DNA contributor to the mask Little was washing was a woman, Gottlieb said DNA testing showed. And police never tested numerous items — such as a condom, vodka bottle and syringe — found near the exit prosecutors say the killer used to flee the hospital.
