Arkansas Criminal Appeals

All of the decisions from the Arkansas Court of Appeals this week went for the State.  It improves the State’s record for the year to 8-0. 

Benton v. State had the only dissent of the week.  Benton was convicted of second degree forgery and theft by receiving.  He recieved an astonishing 60 years in ADC.  The issues on appeal were simply sufficiency of the evidence on each of the two charges.  On the thefty by receiving it was a unanimous court affirming the verdict.  However, the Court was divided 4-2 on whether the accomplice had sufficient corroboration on the forgery charge. 

Cooper v. State, Duncan v. State, and Walker v. State all involved arguments that were not preserved for appeal. 

Plessy v. State involved several issues on appeal.  Several of the arguments on appeal were not properly preserved below.  The final arguments involved a dying declaration, a mistrial, and prejudicial photographs.  The Court correctly found that none of these arguments had any merit.