A Carroll County district judge admitted giving improper favors to defendants and resigned Saturday, while denying more serious allegations of sexual misconduct.
By agreeing to resign on the final day of his term, Judge Timothy Parker gave up any chance of becoming a judge in the future, according to the Arkansas Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission, which on Tuesday released a summary of its investigative findings on Parker.
According to a letter sent to Parker summarizing his agreement with the commission, Parker admitted to giving preferential treatment to his friends and former clients, including making visits to the Carroll County jail to secure release for defendants and giving them rides home.
The letter also states that the commission's investigative panel obtained text messages and video statements from women alleging that Parker had lowered bail and secured release for defendants in exchange for sexual favors. The women also alleged that Parker traded cash and prescription pills for sexual favors, according to the letter.
Parker disputed those allegations, according to the letter, but agreed to resign when faced with the threat of formal misconduct charges being filed by the commission, which would have made more details of the allegations public.
Parker didn't respond to several attempts to contact him Tuesday.
Parker was one of three part-time judges serving his district, which includes Madison and Carroll counties. Part-time judges are allowed to supplement their income by representing clients in private practice, but they cannot practice law within their own courtroom or practice criminal law in the county they serve.
The commission has turned over any of its findings with criminal implications to special prosecutor Jason Barrett, according to Executive Director David Sachar.
Sachar declined to speculate on what criminal charges could result from the commission's investigation, but said Barrett is investigating the matter.
Barrett did not return a message left with the Office of the Prosecutor Coordinator in Little Rock.
On the basis of information from law enforcement, the commission opened its investigation on Parker in October, Sachar said, and completed the final negotiations over Parker's agreement to resign during the final three weeks of the year.
The investigation received assistance from the Carroll County sheriff's office, the Eureka Springs Police Department and the attorney general's office Cyber Crimes Unit, according to the letter.
Had the commission moved forward with filing judicial misconduct charges against Parker, a more detailed overview of the allegations, including statements from witnesses, correspondence and court documents would have been released, Sachar said, with more evidence possibly arising during a public hearing.
That was the case with former Cross County District Judge Joseph Boeckmann of Wynne, who was charged by the commission last year with using his authority to solicit sexual favors from young men in his court.
Boeckmann was suspended but denied the allegations and requested a public hearing. The commission later said the abuse -- allegedly including a collection of thousands of sexually explicit photos of defendants -- had been going on as far back as the 1980s.
Sachar called Boeckmann's case the "worst case of judicial misconduct in Arkansas history," according to a previous report by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Boeckmann resigned in May but continues to face federal bribery charges.
Sachar commended his office's investigations but called Parker and Boeckmann "anomalies."
"Don't mistake the fact that our office was effective in getting rid of two judges to mean that there is a larger problem of sexual misconduct in the judiciary," Sachar said.
The investigation was headed by a three-member panel chosen from the nine-member Arkansas Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission, including Circuit Judge Cindy Thyer of Jonesboro, Cabot attorney Clinton McGue and former state Rep. John Paul Wells, D-Paris. Sachar is not a voting member of the panel but an administrator of the office.
Parker was to leave office at the end of 2016. The three part-time judgeships in his district were consolidated into a single full-time position at the start of 2017, and Parker did not run for the post last March.
The winner of that election, former part-time Madison County District Judge Dale Ramsey, said he was unaware of the investigation until he read Tuesday's release of the commission's findings.
Ramsey said the allegations were "disturbing and certainly put the judiciary in a bad light," but he said he observed no improprieties during the four years in which Parker occasionally appeared as an attorney in Ramsey's Madison County courtroom.
More active involvement -- and whistle-blowing -- from citizens concerned about the judiciary is good for the state's court system, Ramsey said.
Ramsey was sworn in as the full-time district judge for the district Jan. 1 and began presiding over arraignments and trials at the courthouse in Eureka Springs on Tuesday.
A Section on 01/04/2017