A Cross County man serving time in the Arkansas Department of Corrections for possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia was sentenced to 7½ years in federal prison after he pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiracy to commit sex trafficking.
Arthur "Taz" Isom, 43, had been scheduled to plead guilty before Chief U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. in May but his hearing was delayed at the last minute after Isom discovered that his criminal history put him at risk of being sentenced as a career offender, which could have resulted in a life sentence.
Isom has a history of drug offenses and misdemeanors dating to 2012, according to court records from Cross and Pulaski counties. Had he been designated a career offender, his sentence under the U.S. sentencing guidelines -- which are determined with help from the findings of a presentence investigation report submitted by the office of probation and pretrial services -- would likely have been harsher.
At his May 27 sentencing hearing, Isom's attorney, Toney Brasuell of Little Rock, asked Marshall for a continuance of Isom's jury trial to allow time for further plea negotiations and asked that the presentence investigation be conducted and the report be submitted before his client entered a plea so that Isom would have knowledge of his potential exposure before making a decision about whether to go to trial.
According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Allison Bragg, from January 2013 to July 2016, Isom and an unindicted co-conspirator had agreed to have the individual lure women to Isom's residence where Isom would exchange drugs for sex.
"The purpose of the agreement was to supply the women with drugs, and when they were sufficiently impaired, for the defendant to have sex with them," Bragg said.
On Sept. 7, 2015, she said, Isom went to a residence in Wynne where one of the women was staying. Bragg said the woman later told police that Isom had pulled a gun and threatened to kill her, which she said Isom denied to police, "but that he threatened to 'beat her ass.'"
"The woman understood that the threat was meant to scare her into continuing the activity of exchanging drugs for sex," Bragg said.
Bragg and Brasuell outlined an agreement that had been reached that would result in Isom going to prison for 90 months, half of the 15-year minimum sentence under the statutes but well above the guideline sentencing range of 41-51 months in prison and five years to life of supervised release.
The plea agreement was reached under Rule 11(c)(1)(c) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which allows defendants and prosecutors to reach a mutual sentencing agreement. To accept the plea, the judge must accept the sentencing recommendation in the agreement.
If the judge rejects the agreement, the defendant must be given the opportunity to withdraw the plea and be advised that failure to do so could result in a less favorable resolution than contained in the plea agreement.
Before getting underway, Marshall queried Isom on his state of mind and his relationship with Brasuell.
"He's a good lawyer," Isom responded. "He's [done] his job."
"Been your champion with the government and argued for you?" Marshall asked. "Worked hard for you as far as you know?"
"We're going to see if he's my champion," Isom said, cheerfully, prompting a ripple of laughter in the courtroom. "I hope to say he has."
Alluding to the complexities of the plea agreement and the uncertainty of the outcome, Marshall asked Isom if he had carefully gone over the agreement with Brasuell to get a good understanding of it.
"This is proposed to me as a package, and I have to say yes I'll accept it or no I won't," Marshall said. "Unless I'm willing to accept it, you are not agreeing to plead guilty, that's my understanding."
Because the plea conditions required admissions that could potentially damage his client in a trial, Brasuell asked Marshall to rule on whether those admissions could be used against Isom if the judge rejected the agreement and the matter were to go to trial.
"I need to make sure he's protected if we've got an agreement on the facts and the court says, 'I've taken this under consideration and I'm not going to accept the plea agreement,'" Brasuell said. "Because that means we're going to trial."
Bragg said the government could agree not to use any incriminating admissions in the plea agreement if the matter were to go to trial.
"I understand this is a special circumstance," Bragg said. "As part of the c1c plea ... everyone's acceptance is contingent upon everyone else's acceptance almost. ... I'm not going to ask to use that, if that's any help to the court in making that decision."
Bragg said if the plea deal were to fail, the matter would likely go to trial, but she had tried to strike a balance between a low-end sentence as recommended in the guidelines and a minimum 15-year and possible life sentence if Isom were to be convicted out of consideration for the victims.
"There's such a wide range of possibilities here that the government's contemplation was how can we minimize the impact of this case on the victims," she said. "Ninety months is half the 15 years this defendant would get at trial if he were to be convicted on a substantive count of trafficking. That's why 90 months was the government's sticking point."
Marshall agreed that, should he reject the plea, Isom would be held harmless for any admissions made as part of the plea.
The hearing threatened to go off the rails over statements put into the presentence report that Isom said were untrue, prompting a recess of more than an hour to give the attorneys time to resolve the issue.
In addition to the 90-month sentence, Marshall imposed a five-year period of supervised release once Isom is freed from prison.
"I believe we'll know sooner rather than later if you are on the straight and narrow," Marshall said.