The Arkansas Parole Board has approved a June parole date for former University of Central Arkansas Chief of Staff Jack Gillean, who went to prison in December for commercial burglary, a board spokesman said Tuesday.
Gillean, 59, was sentenced to three years in prison, a $35,000 fine and 120 months of probation after being convicted in March 2014 of commercial burglary in a test-cheating scandal at UCA.
The board agreed that Gillean could be released on parole June 16 or thereafter, spokesman Solomon Graves said Tuesday.
"He will be released on or after that date, depending on his ability to obtain an approved residence plan," Graves said in an email.
The panel reached the decision last week and released it this week. Member Andy Shock recused. Shock was the Faulkner County sheriff at the time of Gillean's trial.
This is the first time Gillean was eligible for parole consideration, Graves said. The board did not interview Gillean in person.
Commissioner John Belken recommended parole after reviewing Gillean's file.
Conditions after release include completion of an employment plan, abstinence from drugs and alcohol, no association with UCA, periodic drug testing and no contact with the former UCA student who was involved in the burglaries with Gillean. Gillean also will have community service hours, at his parole officer's discretion, Graves said.
Gillean was free pending an appeal of his conviction when Circuit Judge Charles Clawson Jr. of Conway ordered Gillean's arrest because the prosecuting attorney's office said a probation office had advised that Gillean had tested positive for marijuana six times and once for amphetamines since his trial ended.
Earlier in December, a three-judge panel of the Arkansas Court of Appeals upheld Gillean's convictions. Gillean could have appealed again but did not as part of an agreement with the state.
Gillean was charged after a now-former UCA student, Cameron Stark, told police that Gillean had willingly given him UCA-issued keys and a key card with the knowledge that Stark intended to use them to enter professors' offices and steal tests. Stark later testified under immunity.
Gillean left his UCA position days after Stark gave university police Gillean's keys and said Gillean had given them to him.
Stark was being questioned at the time about a drug theft on campus. No one was charged in that theft.
Gillean's trial, held in Clinton because of a change of venue because of pretrial publicity, exposed details of his drug and alcohol use and his sex life.
When he abruptly resigned from his UCA job in June 2012 during a police investigation, his salary was $146,971. He had worked there since 1996. Before joining UCA, Gillean worked as a deputy Arkansas attorney general and as executive assistant for criminal justice when Jim Guy Tucker was governor.
State Desk on 05/04/2016