Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced Wednesday his intention to commute the sentences of two men convicted of murder decades ago.
Hutchinson said he plans to commute the sentence of James T. Carmichael, 59, who was convicted of capital murder in 1987 in Pulaski County, and Bryan E. Dickinson, 45, who was convicted of first-degree murder in 2000 in Fulton County.
Carmichael's sentence will go from life without parole in the Department of Corrections to 35 years, which will make him eligible for release. Pulaski County Prosecuting Attorney Larry Jegley raised objections to Carmichael's request.
Carmichael has spent almost 35 years in prison after a jury rejected his defense that an unknown hitchhiker stole his car and pistol in 1987 and fatally shot 28-year-old Eric Marsh in his North Little Rock home, according to a previous Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article.
Marsh was killed shortly after midnight after Carmichael, then 24, followed Marsh's wife, Elizabeth, home from the Nest Cocktail Lounge at 2619 Pike Ave., where she had been drinking and dancing for a couple of hours after shopping for groceries.
Carmichael pulled up to Elizabeth Marsh's car and asked her if she wanted to "smoke a bowl" of marijuana. After she refused, Carmichael followed her home and repeated the question as she walked toward her home. After she refused a second time, Carmichael came up from behind, grabbed her and started to pull her pants down while undoing his pants, according to testimony from Elizabeth Marsh.
When Eric Marsh heard the struggle, he went outside and followed Carmichael to his car, where Marsh was shot with a .25-caliber pistol.
In his clemency application in 2007, Carmichael checked boxes indicating that he wanted to correct an injustice that occurred at his trial and adjust an excessive sentence.
He wrote that he falsely testified at his trial when he said he didn't kill Marsh. He said he'd met Elizabeth Marsh at the Nest Lounge and that he had drank and danced with her before she suggested they leave to smoke "dope" together.
In his application, he noted that he didn't know Elizabeth Marsh was married and didn't notice if she was wearing a ring. After smoking marijuana, Carmichael wrote, he and Elizabeth Marsh began to fondle each other before her husband discovered them and threatened to kill Carmichael.
Carmichael wrote that he shot Eric Marsh to stop Marsh from attacking him, and didn't think a small-caliber pistol like his would kill anyone.
The Parole Board has voted multiple times over the past two decades to recommend clemency in the case.
Dickinson's sentence would go from 40 years in the Arkansas Department of Corrections to making him immediately eligible for parole. There are no law enforcement objections to Dickinson's application.
Dickinson was one of two people charged with murder in 1999 after the decomposed body of a Mammoth Spring man was found near the Spring River in northern Fulton County, according to a previous Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article.
A fisherman found the decomposed body of a white man in some woods near the Spring River's Bayou Access area early in the morning, police said. The state Medical Examiner's Office used fingerprints to identify the body and determined it was a homicide.
Dickinson and another man were arrested in connection to the homicide, and they were sentenced a year later.