LITTLE ROCK — A change of heart by the U.S. Probation Office for the Middle District of Tennessee has spared Operation Delta Blues defendant Donnie Mitchell from a resentencing hearing that was scheduled for this morning in Little Rock.
On Feb. 27, impressed by arguments that the 50-year-old Helena-West Helena man was so relieved to be arrested in October 2011 that he fell asleep on a bus taking him to jail, U.S. District Judge James Moody sentenced him to “time served” for the nearly 17 months he had been jailed since his arrest.
Mitchell was facing a sentence of 24 to 30 months in prison under federal sentencing guidelines, after pleading guilty on Sept. 14 to being part of a cocaine-trafficking conspiracy.
His release, however, was conditioned on the agreement of his sister, a school principal in Nashville, to let him live with her, under her supervision as well as electronic monitoring by federal probation officers, for the first eight months of his three-year probationary sentence.
Defense attorney Jim Wyatt of Little Rock relayed the sister’s agreement during the sentencing hearing in Moody’s Little Rock courtroom, noting that the woman would have attended and testified to that herself, but she had to work that day. So, to cover his bases, Moody included a requirement that the probation office in Nashville, which would be responsible for monitoring Mitchell, approve the arrangement after contacting the sister and inspecting her home.
Two days later, on March 1, the court got word from the Nashville probation office that it wouldn’t accept supervision of Mitchell, prompting Moody to rescind the original sentence and order a new sentencing hearing.
Enter Eddie Towe, chief U.S. probation officer in Little Rock, who upon hearing about the situation, called his old office in Nashville.
“I reached out and got them to look at the case again, and they decided they’d give him a chance,” Towe said Thursday.
Acknowledging that each district’s budget plays a role in deciding whether to take on electronic monitoring requirements from other districts, Towe said he didn’t know if federal agency cutbacks that took effect March 1 as part of government “sequestration” had anything to do with Mitchell’s case.
“The Middle District of Tennessee was very gracious in looking at the case again, and sent someone out to his sister’s house,” Towe said. The visit apparently went well, because the district later notified Moody’s court that it would accept Mitchell, after all.
Wyatt, Mitchell’s defense attorney, said Thursday that he wasn’t sure what had prompted Moody to issue an order Wednesday withdrawing the vacated sentence “based upon new information received by the Court.”
“Whatever happened, I’m just glad it happened,” he said.
At Mitchell’s sentencing hearing, Wyatt said Mitchell had essentially become trapped in a drug-dealing lifestyle, unable to escape the demands of Sedrick Trice, the leader of the drug operation who was always at Mitchell’s house at the invitation of Mitchell’s father, with whom he lived.
Mitchell also was a cocaine addict and “had to do things for Mr. Trice” to get the drug, Wyatt said.
He said Mitchell was relieved to be arrested and escape his chaotic home life, where his father had even fired a gun at him. Wyatt said Mitchell told him that his arrest “was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Arkansas, Pages 13 on 03/08/2013