A U.S. magistrate judge ordered the release Monday of a Phillips County constable accused of being a felon who stashed machine-gun parts in violin cases in his home and kept several fully automatic AK-47-style rifles in tubes on his property.
James Weldon King, 50, was placed on house arrest and electronic monitoring by U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Thomas Ray after a nearly three-hour hearing at the federal courts building in Little Rock.
But late Monday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie Peters filed a motion asking that U.S. District Judge Bill Wilson overrule Ray’s decision and delay King’s release until a hearing could be held to reconsider the government’s request to have King detained until trial.
Ray had already delayed King’s release until the man could find permanent housing where he could be placed on electronic monitoring. King said during the hearing that he was moving and didn’t yet know where he could stay for an extended period.
As of Monday evening, Wilson hadn’t ruled on the government’s motion, according to the case’s online court docket.
King, who was indicted Feb. 6 on one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm and possession of an unregistered firearm, remained in the Pulaski County jail Monday evening.
Peters’ motion came after the hearing before Ray, in which federal agents questioned King’s mental health and described him as being “paranoid” about helicopters flying over his house and shooting at him.
King is accused of possessing numerous firearms despite being convicted of two counts of grand larceny in Jackson County, Miss., in the mid-1980s.
Federal agents have said they began investigating King after members of the Helena-West Helena community expressed concerns that he had been elected to be the St. Francis township constable and was carrying a gun despite being a felon.
In his ruling, Ray told Peters and King’s federal public defender, Chris Tarver, that he was concerned that King had amassed a large number of weapons after having been convicted of a felony. King’s statements to federal agents suggesting he was suffering from delusions or “has some kind of paranoid issues” also were troubling, Ray said.
“But there’s no evidence, with whatever these delusions are, that he’s taken any of these weapons and tried to hurt anyone with them,” Ray said, noting that King had lived for decades in Helena-West Helena without being arrested.
“For almost 30 years, he has lived a life that wouldn’t pose a risk to anyone that would rise to the level of a felony or misdemeanor,” the magistrate judge said.
He then ordered King undergo mental counseling and a mental evaluation as part of several conditions of his home detention. The condition included that King not possess or be around firearms.
“You’re not in Phillips County court anymore,” Ray told King. “You’re in federal court, and there will be swift actions taken against you if you violate these conditions.”
Ray’s decision, which he stayed until the close of business Monday to allow the government to appeal, came after agents with the FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives detailed what they’d found during a search of King’s home on Jan. 30. That day, King came to the door in his pajamas with a .25-caliber pistol strapped to his ankle. The gun is specifically referred to in King’s indictment.
ATF Special Agent Glen Jordan testified during Monday’s hearing that federal agents found three tubes containing a total of at least nine unregistered, fully automatic, AK-47-style rifles in a storage room behind King’s house while serving a search warrant.
The tubes, which also contained a semi-automatic AK-47, showed signs of having been buried, he said. At least one of the rifles in the tubes appeared to be handmade or assembled from parts, Jordan said.
“The AK-47 rifle ... bears no manufacturing marks and appears to be clandestinely manufactured,” Jordan said.
Jordan testified that he didn’t test-fire the AK-47-type rifles but did a preliminary examination that showed several had modifications that allowed them to be fired as fully automatic.
Altogether, federal agents found more than 35 firearms in King’s house, including several shotguns, pistols and rifles.
Federal agents also found 32,604 rounds of ammunition at King’s home and a shop that King had used previously to operate a wrecker service. About 12,700 of the rounds were for the AK-47s, Jordan said.
The agents also found numerous partly assembled machine guns, machine-gun parts and other assorted tools used for making firearms, including some used to convert semi-automatic rifles into automatic machine guns. Some of the gun parts were found in violin cases at King’s house, where agents also found a bucket of ammunition in his kitchen, Jordan said.
During Jordan’s testimony, Ray noted that the case was “deep in the weeds of federal firearms law” and that it’s legal to have the machine-gun parts. But “the second they assemble that weapon into a machine gun, they are illegal unless I [am registered] to possess them,” Ray said.
“That’s correct,” Jordan replied.
It is legal to own automatic firearms registered with the federal government before 1986, Jordan testified. It also is legal to transfer those machine guns to other people using the registration process.
But “Mr. King does not have any weapons registered,” Jordan noted, referring to the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record.
Even if King hadn’t been a felon, some of the weapons also couldn’t be legally possessed at all, including four rifles with barrels shorter than the 16-inch minimum legal length, Jordan said.
Jordan’s testimony came after FBI Special Agent Carrie Land, a white-collar and public corruption investigator, testified that King also had about 40 pairs of handcuffs in individual boxes at his home, which she said is an unusually large amount even for a law enforcement officer.
Land also testified that King had made paranoid comments to her the day of the search of his house.
As agents led King from his home, he asked if the FBI was taking his guns, Land said.
“He asked me how he was going to defend himself. I said, ‘Defend him from what?,’”Land testified. “He said, ‘All his enemies.’ They were out to get him.”
King also told her that he believed that his Mississippi felony conviction was fabricated and that he believed that people had shot at him from helicopters, Land said.
During questioning, Tarver, the public defender, asked Land about the statements, noting that she hadn’t included them in her official report of the interview.
Tarver also questioned whether the government had shown that his client had ever exhibited violent tendencies.
“We’re talking about crimes that took place over 20 years ago and the fact that this is not a crime of violence,” Tarver said referring to the larceny charges.
“We think that Mr. King could be released into the community,” he said.
In response, Peters argued that there was no way of knowing whether King had other weapons stashed on his property.
“Who knows what else was buried out there?” she asked, foreshadowing arguments she made later in her motion concerning Ray’s decision.
“I don’t want to take the risk that he has other tubes buried out there that he can access, ... Why is somebody burying AK-47s? And what else is out there?” she said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 02/12/2013