Judge throws out suit seeking parole

LITTLE ROCK — A Pulaski County circuit judge has thrown out a lawsuit by an inmate who claimed that state prison officials have wrongly classified him as a violent offender, a designation that has denied him parole.

Judge Collins Kilgore rejected Marion “Dank” Butler’s arguments in a two-sentence order Tuesday, ending the 36-year-old Little Rock man’s 6-month-old lawsuit against the Arkansas Department of Correction and its director, Ray Hobbs.

Butler, represented by attorney Willard Proctor, claimed that the prison system was wrong to refuse him parole in June 2011 on his eight-year sentence for first-degree battery and robbery under 2001 state law, Arkansas Code Annotated 16-93-609, which requires that offenders with previous violent convictions serve all of their prison time.

Butler, who has been sent to prison four times since 2001, had at least 13 felony convictions before last year’s sentencing, mostly for drugs and property crimes.

He argued in his suit that prison officials were wrong to consider his 2006 kidnapping conviction as a violent offense sufficient to deny him parole. He is scheduled for release in February 2018. He claimed that he should have to serve only 32 months before qualifying for parole.

Kilgore did not state a rationale for his dismissal of the case, but at a hearing Friday, Deputy Attorney General Dennis Hansen offered him three reasons for quashing the suit.

Lawsuits like Butler’s are barred by sovereign immunity because one branch of the government generally cannot exercise control over the actions of another branch, Hansen said.

Also, the Arkansas Supreme Court has rejected cases like Butler’s as an improper civil challenge to sentencing, since defendants have appeal options available under criminal law, Hansen said.

And Butler’s suit should be barred from proceeding because prison officials are properly applying the law to deny him parole, Hansen added.

Butler’s attorney said the action his client was seeking — refiguring his parole eligibility — meant that his lawsuit fell under an exemption to the state’s sovereign immunity protections.

Proctor also told the judge that Arkansas recognizes two levels of kidnapping, the most serious of which is a Class Y felony that carries a potential life sentence. Butler was convicted of the lesser version, a Class B felony with a 20-year maximum sentence.

But the statute on determining whether an offender is violent wrongly makes no distinction between the kidnapping offenses, Proctor argued, which should bar prison officials from using kidnapping as the basis for determining an offender’s parole status.

Court records show that Butler pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree battery and two robbery counts, reduced from aggravated robbery, for two holdups and shootings about 2 1/2 months apart.

In a September 2009 holdup, Butler robbed an acquaintance, Entrone Scott, of about $800 and a cell phone, and shot Scott in the foot on Valentine Road near Cherrydale Road.

In December 2009, Butler robbed Felecia Allen, using her own gun to shoot her in the leg on Wooten Road after the pair reportedly had smoked crack cocaine together.

In the kidnapping case, Butler broke into the Cherne Road home in Sherwood of Tracye Goodwin in April 2005, believing that she had some cache of cash, according to court records. He locked Goodwin and her three children in a bathroom while he ransacked the residence. He pleaded guilty to kidnapping and residential burglary in exchange for a 15-year sentence in February 2006.