A Little Rock man who stole a cache of guns, including an AR-15 rifle, has received a 15-year prison sentence after amassing 15 felony convictions.
Sentencing papers filed Tuesday by deputy prosecutor Jennifer Corbin show that Marcus James White's last four convictions -- residential burglary, theft, felon in possession of a firearm, and breaking or entering -- stem from two arrests last year.
Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen imposed the 15-year term in a plea agreement negotiated by defense attorney Mac Carder that also allows White's sentence to run concurrently with the five-year term that the father of six received in Garland County for pleading guilty to two felonies, breaking or entering and theft.
In that case, White was charged after security cameras at Oaklawn Racing, at 2705 Central Ave. in Hot Springs, recorded him breaking into a gray 2012 Chevrolet Malibu belonging to Johnnie Murphy and stealing a GPS device, cellphone, computer tablet, sneakers and a diamond ring about 2 a.m. on June 11, 2017. The property was not recovered.
Court filings show that Hot Springs police were able to confirm White's identity because he had used his casino player's card about 8 minutes before breaking into the car. White was arrested about five months later in November 2017.
His arrest involving the gun theft came about seven months later, on July 9, 2018, in North Little Rock after police responding to a burglary alarm at the Fountaine Bleu North apartments discovered that someone had forced entry into the home of Leonid Linkov.
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The place was empty, but Linkov provided detectives with security video of a man wearing a white hard hat and bright yellow gloves breaking into the home.
Apartment employee Kathryn Murphy told police that she'd keep an eye out for the man and that same afternoon, she reported a glove-wearing man on the premises who looked like the burglar. Police confronted the man, who turned out to be White, and discovered a white hard hat in the back of his 1999 Ford Crown Victoria.
The security video confirmed that White was the thief, court filings show.
The breaking or entering charge stems from the theft of a watch and tools in North Little Rock from a 2015 Dodge Ram pickup belonging to Clinton Willis. That theft occurred on the same day as the gun theft, but police couldn't link him immediately to that break-in and arrested him on a warrant about two months later.
White was first sentenced to prison in October 2013 after he pleaded guilty to eight felony charges in five cases, including forgery, theft of scrap metal, residential burglary, and drug and weapon charges, in exchange for a three-year sentence.
Court filings show that he was arrested July 5, 2012, with phencyclidine, the hallucinogenic known as PCP or angel dust, and a gun. He was on probation at the time for his first felony, a 2009 drug possession conviction from Independence County.
He was arrested again for stealing tools and DVDs in the Nov. 25, 2012, residential burglary of a Little Rock home.
He and another man were arrested about four months later, in February 2013, after they were seen burglarizing the Little Rock home of Chondra Goldsmith at 10324 Stardust Trail.
With White behind the wheel, the pair led police on a brief car chase that ended when the 1997 Chevrolet Caprice became stuck on a rock in the front yard of 9800 Comstock Road.
White's co-defendant, 23-year-old Jerard Ele Ball of Little Rock, received a 10-year sentence for pleading guilty to residential burglary, but Ball's sentence was extended to 20 years when he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for shooting 27-year-old Charles Hall Jr. of Star City in Little Rock in October 2012.
White's next arrest came Aug. 15, 2013, after White and another man, 30-year-old William Christopher Raymond of Little Rock, were caught with a dismantled air-conditioner unit that had just been stolen.
Raymond, who was on parole at the time, pleaded guilty to theft of scrap metal in that case in exchange for a 10-year prison sentence.
A woman accompanying the men, Candice Rochelle Giles, 27, of Little Rock was also arrested after police found two guns in her purse. She was sentenced to a year of probation.
While White was in jail awaiting trial, Little Rock police were able to link him to a forgery case.
Metro on 07/14/2019