A killer at 17, a convict serving a life sentence at 18, Charles Lee walked out of prison after a quarter-century last week as a parolee at age 43.
The Little Rock man's life term was deemed illegal six years ago under a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The 2012 decision, Miller v. Alabama, barred the practice of automatically imposing no-parole life sentences for teenage murderers, regardless of whether they were convicted as killers or accomplices.
The Miller decision took about four years before being fully felt in Arkansas. Authorities resisted applying it retroactively, maintaining that only teenage defendants charged after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling qualified.
It took a June 2015 ruling from the Arkansas Supreme Court -- in the case of Ulonzo Gordon, who was then 37 -- to establish that every Arkansas defendant convicted of capital murder for a killing committed as a teenager under 18 was eligible for resentencing under the Miller decision. Gordon had been convicted and sentenced to a life term in June 1995 for a West Memphis slaying committed when he was 17.
The Arkansas justices found that, in light of the Miller ruling, the state's mandatory life-sentencing provision qualified as cruel and unusual punishment banned under the U.S. Constitution, regardless of when the defendant was convicted or how much time he'd spent in prison. But the Gordon decision did not immediately take effect because of an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court by the state attorney general's office.
The federal high court circumvented that appeal effort a few months later with a January 2016 ruling in a Louisiana case that essentially agreed with the Arkansas justices that Miller must be applied retroactively.
The Louisiana decision allowed eligible Arkansas prisoners, about 55 of them, to either petition the courts for new sentencing or, if they'd already started the process, to get a court order, a habeas corpus writ, to nullify their life sentences.
Resentencings in Pulaski County began in August 2016. Two defendants, Randy Damon Wilkins, convicted in 1995, and Detric Avelle Franklin, a 1992 convict, had their sentences reduced less than a month apart to negotiated terms of 30 years and 40 years, respectively.
But further resentencings were put on hold in early fall 2016 as prosecutors and defendants statewide waited to see whether the Legislature, which was about to go into session, could devise a quicker remedy.
The sides hoped lawmakers could find a solution that would satisfy the requirements of the Miller ruling, eliminate the need for prosecutors to re-evaluate each case individually and also spare victims' families from having to go through a new sentencing, a process that could have required them to testify or otherwise directly relive the trauma of their loss.
The General Assembly's first attempt at resolving the issue had failed in 2015, but in March 2017, lawmakers were able to pass Act 539, the Fair Sentencing of Minors Act of 2017, which went into effect immediately upon Gov. Asa Hutchinson's signature.
The new sentencing law left open the possibility of life sentences for the Miller kids by establishing mandatory minimum terms for eligible convicts before they could apply for early release: 30 years for capital murder, 25 years for first-degree murder and 20 years for nonhomicide offenses.
Authorities hoped to automatically apply that 30-year minimum to the remaining 40 or so defendants to whom the Miller ruling applied. But the Arkansas Supreme Court, ruling in May after a 16-month-long court challenge to the new law, said they could not.
Those defendants were entitled to new sentencing because they'd all had their unconstitutional life sentences vacated by court order in the years between the 2012 Miller ruling and the 2017 fair-sentencing law, the state high court ruled in the case of 38-year-old Derrick Harris.
The Monticello man, convicted of capital murder in Drew County for killing a used-car salesman in 1996 when he was 15, was subsequently resentenced to life in prison, but with the opportunity for parole.
In Pulaski County, the pause in resentencings ended in June, less than a month after the Harris decision.
Brandon Hardman -- convicted in 2002 for killing a rival gang member, 17-year-old Antwan Jones, when Hardman was 16 -- received a negotiated 40-year sentence on June 18 that makes the 34-year-old defendant immediately parole-eligible.
Three days later, Damarcus Jordan, 34, also accepted a 40-year term, which also makes him eligible for release.
Jordan was 16 in February 2001 when he and two other teens set up 37-year-old pizza deliveryman Herman Lockhart for a holdup. They ambushed Lockhart, who was working his second job, in the driveway of a southwest Little Rock home. Jordan shot the married father of 10 in the chest.
Jordan didn't testify at his trial, but he told police the gun had accidentally fired when Lockhart grabbed for it. Jordan said he needed the money to buy clothes and other things because his mother had told him he needed to get out on his own. Jurors deliberated less than 20 minutes before finding him guilty.
On July 25, Terry Lynn Carroll, 39, of Little Rock saw his life sentence reduced to 40 years after a two-day hearing. His lawyers asked for a 30-year sentence, since Carroll hadn't killed anyone.
Prosecutors had sought a new life sentence, albeit one with parole, for Carroll, who at age 16 in June 1995 had stormed into the home of a Little Rock family with three others. They were looking for a 19-year-old woman they believed had set up a friend to be killed. The woman wasn't there, but her mother and three siblings were.
Carroll, armed with a shotgun, held the woman at bay while his friend, Riley Noel, shot the children to death execution-style on her living room floor. Noel, 24 at the time of the killings, got the death penalty and was executed in 2003.
Carroll pleaded guilty to attempted capital murder and three counts of capital murder in exchange for a life sentence rather than face the death penalty.
The new sentence imposed by Circuit Judge Herb Wright last week is expected to require Carroll to serve another 13 years in prison before he can qualify for parole. Wright stacked the new term on top of the 30-year sentence Carroll received for the attempted capital murder of the mother, Mary Malek Hussain.
On July 26, Charles Lee became the ninth Pulaski County capital-murder convict, out of the 18 eligible, to have his sentence reduced over the past five weeks.
His life sentence was replaced with a 40-year term negotiated by his lawyers, Lou Marczuk and Bill Simpson, the same public defenders who represented Lee at his 1993 trial.
Lee had fatally shot a man, 23-year-old Phillip Cordova, in August 1992 in Little Rock while trying to rob him, in what was described to jurors at his February 1993 trial as a "drug deal gone wrong." Jury deliberations took about 30 minutes.
The five other defendants who have accepted 40-year terms to replace their life sentences are:
• Tyrone Duncan, 35, of Little Rock. Duncan pleaded guilty to capital murder and kidnapping in 2001 for the abduction and slaying of 82-year-old Bob Cameron of Little Rock. He will be parole-eligible in August 2026.
• Mervin Jenkins, 37, of Little Rock. Jurors deliberated about 15 minutes at his May 2000 trial after hearing him confess to shooting Brian Young seven times in the back while Young was talking on a pay phone in the parking lot of an Asher Avenue gas station in September 1997. Jenkins is currently eligible for release.
• Wallace Allen, 38, of Little Rock. He pleaded guilty to capital murder in June 1998 for killing Carol Rountree in front of her daughters, who were 6, 9 and 11 years old, while trying to rob her outside the family's apartment. Allen, who cursed the victim's sister after being sentenced, is now parole-eligible.
• Charles Louis Jackson, 44, of Little Rock. He is now free on parole. Jackson was 15 when he helped his 19-year-old uncle rob and kill 47-year-old Charles Colclasure in July 1989 just as the married father of three was preparing to go into business for himself. He was cleaning out his old office on East 26th Street when the teens ambushed him, chased him down, and Alvin Jackson shot him repeatedly. Charles Jackson, too young to face the death penalty, said he'd used Colclasure's car to run over the man twice. The pair then threw his body in the Arkansas River. Alvin Jackson was sentenced to life for capital murder but was sent to death row in 1996 after killing a prison guard.
• Laquanda Jacobs, 43, of Little Rock. She was released in mid-July. She shot 17-year-old Kevin Gaddy in the chest while robbing him of his Chicago Bulls jacket in February 1992. The teen had given up the jacket, but Jacobs shot him when he reached into the coat to get his hairbrush.
A Section on 08/02/2018