A registered sex offender accepted a 30-year prison sentence Monday for groping a 12-year-old girl in the middle of the night while he was a guest at her grandmother's North Little Rock home.
Marcus Lamont Blackmon-Smith, 26, pleaded guilty to failure to register as a sex offender and first-degree sexual assault, reduced from rape, in exchange for the 30-year term.
Deputy prosecutor Barbara Mariani said the defendant had been staying at the home for about a week in June 2016 but had not told authorities where he was, despite a requirement that he notify law enforcement of his residence. His previous registered address was in Clinton.
Mariani said the girl had been sleeping one night when she awoke to Blackmon-Smith touching her after he'd pulled down her pants.
"Inappropriately touching" is how Blackmon-Smith, represented by attorney Patrick Benca, described what he'd done to the girl in June 2016 when asked by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen.
Smith has been deemed a sex offender since he pleaded guilty in May 2011 to two misdemeanor counts of sexual assault, each reduced from felony sexual assault, for molesting a 12-year-old girl in Van Buren County. According to court records, the abuse occurred between October 2008 and February 2009, when Blackmon-Smith would have been 18.
He was subsequently convicted of two counts of misdemeanor voyeurism in separate incidents involving a 16-year-old girl in Van Buren in 2012 and a 13-year-old girl in Ward in 2015, prosecutors said.
Metro on 06/06/2017