A former Little Rock police officer who a judge said failed to show remorse and lied on the witness stand last week was sentenced Wednesday to 8½ years in prison for helping transport marijuana through the city on March 22, 2012, while on duty.
Mark Anthony Jones, 46, who was fired after his arrest in what was actually an FBI sting operation, faced five to 10 years in prison in connection with his guilty plea earlier this year to a charge of attempting to aid and abet the possession of 1,000 pounds of marijuana with the intent to distribute it.
Jones’ sentencing hearing before U.S. District Judge James Moody began Friday but abruptly came to a halt after federal prosecutors complained that in an effort to mitigate his punishment, he was lying on the witness stand about how he got involved in the crime.
When the hearing resumed Wednesday, prosecutors were armed with transcripts of Jones’ conversations last year with a confidential informant, which had been secretly recorded by the FBI and had already been aired in previous hearings. They also presented testimony from the informant, who told the judge that Jones offered on his own to assist in a drug delivery to earn extra cash.
Jones testified last week that he only agreed to the informant’s request for a police escort for an illegal drug shipment in return for $5,000 because it was a way to recoup most of the $6,000 that the informant, a former drug dealer and local comedy promoter, owed him for his participation in a comedy show.
The informant, Brandon Hill, testified Wednesday that he never owed Jones $6,000 “to do a comedy show anywhere.”
Hill, reiterating some of the testimony he gave during a trial in July for former officer Randall Tremayn Robinson, who is Jones’ half brother, denied that Jones was ever a co-promoter with him for a comedy event. However, he said he did pay Jones $500 to perform one segment of a comedy show that ultimately was a flop when the main performer failed to show up.
Jones, a 26-year veteran of the Police Department, testified Friday that he had always been a law-abiding citizen and dedicated police officer until the FBI, through Hill, entrapped him into committing a crime with the lure of being able to recoup money that he was legitimately owed.
It was a much different picture from that previously described by an FBI agent at Jones’ pretrial hearings and during the trial for Robinson, which ended when jurors deadlocked on three charges related to the March delivery and a mistrial was declared. He was convicted of selling half a pound of marijuana to a police informant in 2009. Robinson is scheduled to be retried on the 2012 delivery charges in the spring before another jury.
Hill, who owned a small shipping company in Little Rock, testified Friday that in December of 2011, after the FBI intercepted a package of marijuana that he shipped to himself, he agreed to cooperate with the FBI in return for the leniency in his case. For years, the FBI had been investigating reports of illegal activities by Jones and Robinson, and during that investigation, discovered that Jones knew Hill because of their shared interest in comedy and that Jones regularly dropped by Hill’s business, Mail Boxes Etc.
A transcript played in court Wednesday of a Dec. 15, 2011, conversation between Jones and Hill revealed Jones admiring Hill’s financial success and the life that went with it - ski trips with his girlfriend and an expensive-looking jacket. Jones was recorded bragging about the skills he had learned as a police officer that would make him good at committing crimes.
He said he liked television shows about greed.
“I want to be rich, you know what I’m saying?” he said at one point. “I want that lifestyle.”
“If I take a chance, man, it’s gonna be something that’s worth it,” he said at another point. “It’s gonna be something I can depend on.” He also told Hill, “I’m trying to get off these streets.”
In a second conversation recorded on Feb. 23, 2012, Jones talked about having inside information about how to run a car-theft operation without getting caught.
Hill said Jones told him he was $80,000 in debt to the IRS.
Defense attorney Charles “Dan” Hancock dismissed the recorded conversations as “two men shooting the breeze,” and urged Moody to look instead at Jones’ good deeds over the years, which included saving a life while on duty, in considering how to sentence him.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Pat Harris argued that “the tape is the real deal” when it comes to Jones’ true personality.
“This is a law enforcement officer who has deceived everybody and on the side is just a criminal and a slickster,” Harris said.
In imposing a sentence of 104 months, within a range of 97 to 121 months suggested by federal sentencing guidelines, Moody said Jones did not appear remorseful. He added, “I do think Mr. Jones lost some credibility when he testified at the hearing last Friday,” noting that his statements were “totally inconsistent with what he said in the tapes.”
Moody, who had earlier noted that Jones’ crime was especially egregious because he ignored an emergency dispatch to focus on escorting the marijuana shipment, said he didn’t think Jones was entitled to a sentence below the guideline range.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 10/31/2013