A Pope County man convicted by a jury in 2021 on federal charges of drug conspiracy, aiding and abetting attempted murder and conspiracy to violate RICO was sentenced to life in prison Wednesday by a federal judge in Little Rock.
Marcus Millsap, 55, of Danville, was the only one among 55 defendants in a long-running prosecution of white supremacist gang members and associates on federal charges of racketeering and drug conspiracy who elected to go to trial. He was named in a February 2019 superseding indictment filed in the investigation of gang violence and drug trafficking attributed to members of the New Aryan Empire — a Pope County-based white supremacist gang that was formed as a prison gang in the 1990s and eventually branched out across Arkansas as members were released from prison.
Millsap was accused of soliciting numerous members of the New Aryan Empire, which began in the Pope County jail, to kill an informant who was later found dead but whose murder remains unsolved.
U.S. District Judge Brian Miller also ordered Millsap, who he said it was determined has a liquid net worth of $2.3 million, to pay a $200,000 fine. That was $1.8 million less than Assistant U.S. Attorney Liza Jane Brown asked for, saying the U.S. needed to strip Millsap's ability to use his wealth to operate beyond prison walls.
Noting Millsap's three minor children, Miller said the bulk of Millsap's wealth — which he said was not the result of profit from criminal activity — should be left intact to care for his children.
Of the 55 defendants ultimately named in indictments handed up in the case — 53 of whom pleaded guilty and one who remains a fugitive — Millsap's sentence is the most severe. The next most severe sentence was given to Wesley Gullett, president of the New Aryan Empire, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison in June 2021 for his guilty plea to drug conspiracy and conspiracy to violate RICO.