Little Rock landlord who shot tenant gets 3 years on gun count

A 64-year-old Little Rock landlord who fatally shot a tenant who had clubbed him with a baseball bat has accepted a three-year prison sentence for having the gun he used to kill the man.

John Paul Parkman pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm by certain persons in exchange for the three-year sentence from Pulaski County Circuit Judge Barry Sims, according to sentencing papers filed by deputy prosecutor Reese Lancaster. The plea was negotiated by Parkman's attorney, Rick Holiman. Parkman faced up to 12 years in prison.

Parkman is a convicted sex offender who has done time in Texas and Arkansas for sex crimes. Court records show he got a 15-year sentence in June 1980 in Harris County, Texas, for burglary of a habitation with intent to commit rape for a November 1979 attack on a pregnant Houston woman in her home.

He was released from jail and had moved back to Little Rock while his Texas conviction was being appealed when in November 1984 he was arrested after burglarizing a home on North Beechwood Drive. Parkman was caught after he was seen looking into a window of a home on F Street.

But police were able to connect him to a July 1984 attack on a woman in her North Pierce Street home. The woman had been sexually assaulted by an assailant who had been hiding in her bedroom closet.

Parkman subsequently pleaded guilty to two counts of burglary and a charge of first-degree sexual abuse, reduced from rape, in exchange for a 20-year prison sentence in April 1985 in Pulaski County Circuit Court, court files show. As part of his negotiated plea, the sentence ran concurrently with his Texas prison time.

Parkman was arrested again in November 1993, while he was free on parole, by Little Rock police over accusations that he had raped two women in their respective homes about five months apart, one in January 1993 on Westminster Drive and the other in June 1993 on Green Mountain Drive.

Court filings show that Parkman became a suspect because investigators recalled his 1984 convictions and the women were able to recognize Parkman as their assailant. A third woman who had been raped in October 1993 also identified him as a look-alike to her attacker, but Parkman was never charged in that case.

The rape and burglary charges were dismissed in November 1995 on grounds that prosecutors had taken too long to take Parkman to trial, violating his speedy-trial rights.

Prosecutors appealed the dismissal to the Arkansas Supreme Court, but the high court never reached a decision on the merits of the prosecution argument.

[RELATED: Click here for interactive map + full coverage of crime in Little Rock » arkansasonline.com/lrcrime/]

Instead, justices dismissed the appeal in September 1996 on grounds that the attorney general's office had taken too long to submit written arguments in the case, despite the submission deadline being pushed back nine times to accommodate the state lawyers.

Parkman was classified as a Level 4 sexually violent predator by authorities in 2006 after his release from prison.

He stayed out of trouble with the law until the January 2019 shooting death of Donald Ray Blackburn at Parkman's duplex home at 5805 Stagecoach Road.

According to the arrest report by detective Rick Harmon, Little Rock officers were called to the residence about the shooting and found Blackburn dead in the living room with Parkman nearby with a large cut in his head.

Parkman told detectives that Blackburn and Blackburn's brother were tenants whom Parkman had allowed to stay with him temporarily because the roof of the kitchen in the house the brothers had been renting from him had collapsed.

Parkman said the brothers were supposed to do some work for him that day but instead they went out and got alcohol and were drinking it.

Parkman said he and the brothers "exchanged words" about them drinking when they were supposed to be working and he ordered them to leave the house. One of the brothers told him to make them leave, so he went and got his gun, and fired a shot into the floor, Parkman told the detective.

Blackburn's brother left the house, but Blackburn picked up a baseball bat and hit him in the head, Parkman said. He said he managed to fire two shots, one of which struck Blackburn in the chest, explaining "I'm a cripple but I'm no p****," the report states.

Blackburn's brother, 54-year-old Paul Blackburn, gave a similar account to police as did a woman with him, Joellen Alcorn, 63, according to the report.

The .38-caliber Special revolver Parkman used had belonged to his late father, Forrest Parkman, a former Little Rock police detective who had retired from the force as a lieutenant in 1977 after a 15-year career that included supervising the department's organized crime and intelligence units.

The senior Parkman died in 1984 at 51.

He also had another son, John Parkman's younger brother, James Hamilton Parkman, who died at age 49 in federal prison in October 2004, where he was serving a 20-year sentence imposed on a gun charge.

The gun count stemmed from James Parkman shooting another man in September 1986.

He was convicted of first-degree battery in Pulaski County Circuit Court and sentenced to 40 years in state prison for the shooting in March 1987.

That guilty verdict came about six months after Parkman was acquitted of first-degree murder and battery charges stemming from accusations Parkman had shot two men with a shotgun in May 1986 at Baseline and Stagecoach roads, killing one of them, 39-year-old Jimmy R. Taylor of Little Rock.

Parkman had received an extended sentence for the shooting because he was a habitual offender with convictions of burglary, robbery and aggravated robbery dating back to 1975.

Court records show that Gov. Mike Huckabee commuted Parkman's 40-year sentence in April 2000 after he had served 12 years so Parkman could start a federal term.

Metro on 12/15/2019

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