Josephine L. Hart

The case concerns Jose Chacon's challenge to the termination of his parental rights to his minor child J.T. in Arkansas dependency-neglect proceedings, where the Department of Human Services knew of his status as the biological father but did not notify him or appoint counsel until shortly before the termination hearing. The Arkansas Court of Appeals declined to address Chacon's due process arguments on appeal, concluding they were not preserved at the circuit court level. The dissenting opinion asserts that counsel's statements at the termination hearing sufficiently raised the constitutional claims regarding lack of notice, information, and counsel while Chacon was incarcerated, and that procedural bars cannot override specific assertions of constitutional rights. The Supreme Court denied review of the Court of Appeals decision.

family lawcivil rightsprocedure

The case involved petitioner Anthony Jerome Fitzgerald, who filed a pro se motion under Arkansas Rule of Appellate Procedure–Criminal 19(b) seeking copies of 911 call transcripts from his trial attorney, Gregory Neal Robinson, related to his underlying criminal conviction. After the attorney failed to respond to the motion, Fitzgerald filed additional pro se pleadings including a notice of application for judgment, a motion for default judgment seeking to vacate his conviction, and a motion to amend his request to seek a new trial. The Arkansas Supreme Court ordered the attorney to respond within fourteen days addressing whether he possessed the records, their format, and whether they had been provided to Fitzgerald. The court deemed the notice of application moot and denied the motions for default judgment and to amend, reasoning that Rule 19(b) mandates a response from properly served counsel regardless of the motion's perceived merit.

criminal lawprocedure

Mo Shay was convicted in a bench trial of possession of methamphetamine after an officer found the drug in his wallet during a pat-down in a closed park. Shay moved to suppress the evidence, arguing the officer lacked reasonable suspicion for the frisk and had neither probable cause nor consent to search the wallet. The Arkansas Supreme Court reversed the conviction and remanded the case, holding that the initial frisk was permissible but the subsequent opening of the wallet exceeded the scope of a weapons search and occurred without consent, as confirmed by audio evidence showing no request for or grant of permission. The court applied Arkansas Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.4 and related Fourth Amendment principles to conclude the search was unlawful.

criminal lawprocedure

In Prince v. Kelley, Carl Prince filed a pro se motion for rule on the clerk that sought to have the Arkansas Supreme Court assume jurisdiction over his petition for a writ of habeas corpus, asserting that no circuit court could accept jurisdiction due to repeated transfers between prison units and that his sentence lacked statutory authorization. The majority disposed of the matter by syllabus entry. The dissenting opinion argues that this approach could impede access to habeas relief and that the court has constitutional and statutory authority under Article 7, section 4 of the Arkansas Constitution and Arkansas Code Annotated § 16-112-102(a)(1) to either take jurisdiction or transfer the petition to the appropriate circuit court, emphasizing the historical importance of the writ of habeas corpus.

criminal lawprocedure

This case involves Frederick Pennington's appeal of a resentencing order from the Pulaski County Circuit Court for two counts of aggravated robbery in case No. 60CR-77-1939. Originally sentenced to concurrent life sentences with the possibility of parole in 1978 when aggravated robbery was a Class A felony punishable by five to fifty years or life, Pennington was resentenced to concurrent fifty-year terms. The Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed the resentencing order, explaining that this appeal was not consolidated with related cases and that the issue of consecutive versus concurrent sentences did not arise in this specific case because the new sentences remained concurrent to each other.

criminal lawprocedure

The case involves petitioner Tilton Rhodes's pro se motion for a copy of the transcript from his 2006 rape and sexual assault conviction appeal, which he claims he needs due to indigence after his conviction was affirmed. The Arkansas Supreme Court ordered Rhodes's former attorney to respond within ten days under Arkansas Rule of Appellate Procedure–Criminal 19, specifying details about possession of the transcript, its format, and whether it was provided to the client. The court reasoned that this mandatory response is required to determine if the transcript should be provided at state expense, regardless of the motion's merits.

criminal lawprocedure

Howard T. Wood appealed the Pulaski County Circuit Court's denial of his pro se petition to proceed in forma pauperis, which he filed so he could pursue a declaratory judgment action challenging Arkansas Code Annotated section 16-90-804(c)(2)(B) as unconstitutionally vague. The circuit court had denied the petition without any findings or explanation. The Arkansas Supreme Court held that Rule 72(c) requires the circuit court to make specific findings on indigency based on the petitioner's affidavit and, if the petitioner is indigent, to determine whether the facts state a colorable cause of action. Because no such findings were made and no obvious procedural defect appeared on the face of the pleadings, the court remanded with instructions for the circuit court to enter a supplemental order complying with the rule.

criminal lawprocedure

In Jones v. State, the defendant pleaded guilty to rape and attempted first-degree murder but elected jury sentencing, resulting in consecutive terms of life imprisonment and 720 months. On appeal, his counsel filed a no-merit brief under Anders v. California and Arkansas Supreme Court Rule 4-3(k), asserting no nonfrivolous issues existed, and Jones filed no pro se points. The Arkansas Supreme Court reviewed the three preserved adverse rulings—admission of limited victim-impact testimony from a witness, introduction of additional photographs of the victim's injuries, and the decision to impose consecutive sentences—and concluded each argument on appeal would be frivolous because the trial court acted within its discretion under the rules of evidence and Arkansas Code Annotated section 5-4-403(a). The court also conducted its own review of the record under Rule 4-3(i) and found no prejudicial error. It therefore affirmed the sentences and granted counsel's motion to withdraw.

criminal lawprocedure

This case concerns a petition for review of a Court of Appeals decision affirming the denial of a motion to set aside a foreclosure decree under Arkansas Rule of Civil Procedure 60(c)(4) on grounds of misrepresentation or fraud by an adverse party. The Supreme Court denied the petition. The dissent argues that review should be granted because the Court of Appeals relied on pre-2000 precedent distinguishing between intrinsic and extrinsic fraud, without accounting for the 2000 amendment to Rule 60(c)(4) that expressly permits relief based on either type of fraud.

propertyprocedure

This case involves a dispute over whether losses from a bankruptcy filing could be treated as damages proximately caused by an automobile accident in a personal-injury lawsuit brought by Andrew Brand against Nathan Jarrett and Key Energy Services. The circuit court allowed evidence of the bankruptcy as a jury question on proximate cause, and the Arkansas Court of Appeals affirmed by holding that the defendants' more specific appellate arguments on public policy, jury instructions, and the definition of proximate cause had not been preserved because they were not raised at trial. In this dissent from the denial of a petition for review, Justice Hart argues that the core issue of whether an auto accident could proximately cause bankruptcy losses was in fact presented to and ruled on by the trial court and was briefed on appeal, so the Court of Appeals should have addressed the merits rather than finding waiver.

torts & liabilityprocedure

This case concerns the Arkansas Supreme Court's adoption of the rule from United States v. Patane regarding the state constitution's protection against self-incrimination and its application to physical evidence, such as a firearm, derived from a defendant's statements. The majority declined to reconsider its decision to follow the federal precedent, which permits the introduction of such evidence in criminal proceedings. In this dissenting opinion on denial of rehearing, Justice Hart argues that the court alone interprets the Arkansas Constitution and that similarities to other constitutions do not require adopting external rulings. She asserts that the state right against self-incrimination is not limited to verbal communications and that adopting the Patane rule was unnecessary.

criminal lawcivil rights

This case involved a products-liability suit brought by the estate of a highway department employee killed when struck by a sweeper manufactured by the defendant; the estate alleged the sweeper lacked adequate safety mirrors. After a jury verdict for the defendant, the trial court denied the estate's motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, and the court of appeals affirmed on the ground that the estate had failed to preserve the issue by making a proper directed-verdict motion at trial. Justice Hart dissented from the Arkansas Supreme Court's denial of review, arguing that the estate's counsel had in fact made a sufficient directed-verdict motion by asserting that the evidence supported liability on the theory that a convex mirror would have prevented the accident and that the defendant's expert had not negated that assertion. The dissent concluded that the court of appeals had misread the trial transcript and improperly applied a procedural bar instead of reaching the merits.

proceduretorts & liability

This case involves a dispute over a petition for child support in which the appellee sought retroactive support for periods when he did not have physical custody of the children. The Arkansas Court of Appeals affirmed an award of such support, relying in part on dicta that cited Fonken v. Fonken to interpret Arkansas Code Annotated § 9-14-105. The Arkansas Supreme Court denied the appellant's petition for review of that decision. In dissent, Justice Hart argued that review should be granted because the Court of Appeals' analysis conflicts with the plain language of § 9-14-105(b)(1), which requires the petitioning parent to have physical custody of the minor child, and because no child was seeking support under subsection (c).

family law

James Griffin petitioned the Arkansas Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus, arguing that Circuit Judge Tonya Alexander had failed to timely rule on his petition for a writ of error coram nobis filed in Craighead County Circuit Court. A response indicated that Judge Brent Davis, acting as the substituted judge, had denied the coram nobis petition in an April 2017 order. The court held that the mandamus petition was moot because Griffin had received the relief sought through the court's action on the underlying petition. As a general rule, the court does not review moot issues to avoid rendering advisory opinions, and a case is moot when a judgment would have no practical legal effect on an existing controversy.

criminal lawprocedure

In Wilson v. State, the defendant was convicted by a jury of aggravated robbery, two counts of robbery, theft, and commercial burglary arising from an incident at a K-Mart store where he was seen cutting locks on jewelry cabinets and threatening employees with what he claimed was a pistol. The circuit court imposed a mandatory life sentence for the aggravated robbery under Arkansas's habitual-offender statute based on two prior violent felony convictions, along with consecutive and concurrent terms for the other offenses. On appeal, Wilson challenged the sufficiency of the evidence for the robbery convictions, arguing the threats were not made with the purpose of committing theft or resisting immediate apprehension, and contended that using his prior convictions—obtained when he was a juvenile but prosecuted in adult court—for sentence enhancement violated constitutional protections against double punishment and related to juvenile culpability. The Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed, holding that substantial evidence supported the verdicts because the threats occurred during the theft attempt, and that the priors were valid for enhancement purposes since they were adult convictions and the life sentence punished Wilson's current adult conduct rather than re-punishing juvenile acts.

criminal law

In Ward v. State, the Arkansas Supreme Court addressed whether a circuit court properly followed its prior mandate after determining that Brian Ward's original sentence of fifteen years' imprisonment plus fifteen years suspended for second-degree sexual assault as a habitual offender was illegal. On remand, the circuit court reimposed the same sentence, concluding it could sentence up to the statutory maximum of thirty years despite the earlier ruling. The court held that the circuit court exceeded its limited jurisdiction on remand by deviating from the specific instructions in the prior opinion and mandate, which required resentencing in a manner consistent with that decision. It reversed and remanded for entry of a sentencing order that conforms to the earlier ruling, emphasizing that lower courts must execute appellate mandates without examining their underlying correctness.

criminal lawprocedure

This case involves Zachary Holly's appeal of his convictions for capital murder, rape, kidnapping, and residential burglary arising from the 2012 killing of a six-year-old child whom he had been babysitting. The Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed all convictions and sentences, including the death penalty. The court held that sufficient evidence supported the residential-burglary conviction because Holly entered the victim's home through an unlocked door without license or privilege that night, that his offer to plead guilty was properly excluded from the penalty phase, and that his custodial statement was admissible. The decision rested on the trial evidence of unlawful entry, established rules governing mitigating evidence, and the absence of any constitutional violation in obtaining the statement.

criminal lawprocedure

In this case, Joshua Beyard was convicted by a jury of first-degree murder in 2015 and sentenced to 480 months in prison. He later filed a pro se motion in 2016 seeking to modify the sentence on grounds that it exceeded the presumptive term under state law and that the trial court failed to provide written reasons for any departure, and he appealed the denial of that motion along with related requests for a hearing and counsel. The Arkansas Supreme Court dismissed the appeal, holding that Beyard's claims sought relief for a sentence allegedly imposed in an illegal manner, which must be raised under Arkansas Rule of Criminal Procedure 37.1 and 37.2 within ninety days of the judgment. Because the motion was filed approximately seventeen months after the February 2015 judgment, it was untimely, and the time limits are mandatory.

criminal lawprocedure

The case involved whether appropriations by the Cities of Little Rock and North Little Rock to local chambers of commerce and economic development entities violated article 12, section 5 of the Arkansas Constitution by constituting unlawful donations without consideration. The circuit court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs on that claim, found related contracts void, and permanently enjoined future appropriations in violation of the provision. On appeal, the Arkansas Supreme Court observed that a 2015 amendment to article 12, section 5(b)(2) expressly authorizes municipal appropriations for economic-development services, which rendered the injunction and underlying claim moot. The court therefore remanded with instructions to lift the injunction and dismiss the complaint while denying the appellees' motion to dismiss the appeal on jurisdictional grounds.

business & regulatoryprocedure

This case concerns a double-jeopardy challenge arising from an aggravated-robbery trial in which defense counsel dramatically introduced a previously undisclosed item found in a seized jacket, prompting the prosecutor to accuse counsel of planting evidence and seek a hearing on possible criminal conduct. The circuit court declared a mistrial over the defense’s explicit objection, relying on “overruling necessity” rather than consent, and later denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss the retrial on double-jeopardy grounds. The court of appeals affirmed by treating the defense statements as consent to the mistrial. The Arkansas Supreme Court denied review, and the dissent argues that this denial lets stand an erroneous factual finding that avoids the double-jeopardy question.

criminal lawprocedure