LITTLE ROCK — Vincent Sharnee Johnson once strolled Little Rock's courthouse halls in a dapper dark suit, easily moving between the courtroom galleries reserved for spectators and the "other side of the rail" reserved for lawyers, judges and court officials.
He would occasionally speak in a soft, polite voice to deliver a hushed message either to or from his employer, lawyer R.S. McCullough.
On Tuesday, the former lawyer's assistant stood at a lectern facing U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright, adjusting his glasses as he pored over documents, like lawyers often do, and arguing his points in a heartier tone.
But Johnson isn't a lawyer, or even a lawyer's assistant any more, just as McCullough, now disbarred, is no longer a practicing attorney.
Johnson, once a respected visitor in the halls of the Pulaski County courthouse as well as federal court, is now a bank robber, convicted of robbing a Little Rock branch bank in 2006. He stood before Wright on Tuesday in an orange jail jumpsuit, acting as his own attorney while an appointed member of the bar sat nearby, waiting to step in if called upon.
Despite his attempts to withdraw a guilty plea he entered last September, Johnson was sentenced Tuesday to 15.6 years in prison on one charge and a mandatory seven years on another.
He immediately asked that another attorney be appointed to represent him as he appeals the sentence and the judge's refusal to revoke the guilty plea. Wright obliged.
Minutes earlier, Assistant U.S. Attorney Linda Lipe told the judge that Johnson would have faced a shorter sentence if he had agreed long ago to accept plea offers made before prosecutors dug up documents revealing the full extent of his criminal history.
"He refused all the government's offers," Lipe said. "He delayed to the point that everything had changed."
Lipe noted that in addition to a 1980 bank robbery conviction from New Jersey, records showed Johnson also had been convicted in a robbery in California.
Citing "a lifetime of criminal offenses, including robberies," Wright said she was "departing upward" from the 51- to 63-month penalty range recommended by federal sentencing guidelines, to impose the sentences of 188 months for armed bank robberyand 84 months for brandishing a firearm in relation to a crime of violence.
An indictment handed up Sept. 5, 2006, by a federal grand jury states that Johnson took $10,538 by force from the Pulaski Bank branch at 4900 W. Markham St. on July 21, 2006.
Wright didn't impose restitution, noting that the money was recovered.
She also recommended substance-abuse treatment for Johnson in prison, noting, "He has a serious cocaine problem."
"I believe if he can address that problem, he will stop robbing and stealing," she said. "Otherwise, I don't think he will."
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 08/26/2009