A convicted killer will spend the next 25 years in prison for the rape of a 13-year-old Little Rock girl.
Pulaski County deputy prosecutor Barbara Mariani said Clifton Dale Parker, 44, must spend the entire sentence in prison because his previous conviction disqualifies him for parole. In exchange for the 25-year sentence, Parker pleaded guilty to rape on Monday before Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen.
The prosecutor said Parker, a married father of two, regularly molested the girl from the time she was 10, with the rape occurring in December 2016. Parker was arrested last November.
Parker had been on parole for first-degree murder. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison on March 25, 1995, after pleading guilty to the charge, reduced from capital murder, for the slaying of 27-year-old James Michael White of Little Rock. His murder sentence had been scheduled to run out in 2020. He'll be 69 years old when he is next released from prison.
It's not clear when Parker was paroled. He became eligible for parole in January 2002, married in January 2011 and has had two children in the years since.
According to police reports and court records, White was fatally shot on Aug. 5, 1994, while driving on Southboro Court after trying to buy cocaine from Parker, then 21. White's female passenger was able to steer the car around the corner to Loetscher Lane, where she got out and called for help. A passer-by called police, who arrived to find White dead.
White, who was on probation at the time for marijuana trafficking, had been shot three times. Police found a .25-caliber shell in his car and three other casings on the ground at the scene of the shooting.
A tip about three hours later led them to Parker's home on Crenshaw Drive, where detectives found a .25-caliber pistol on his sofa.
Parker told police he accidentally shot White, but in a February 1995 letter to the court, Parker, a 10th-grade dropout, described the shooting as self-defense, writing that he had turned to selling drugs to earn enough money to survive.
"I'm a very good person when you get to know me, and I'm a very hard worker. Really, I love working, making my own money," the letter states. "But the job I had wasn't paying enough to pay my bills and buy food too. Every two weeks my paycheck is $32. That's no money. That's why I sold drugs for the first time just to get money to pay my bills and put food on the table."
Metro on 02/07/2018