Baxter County Sheriff John Montgomery, ordinarily a good-natured fella and vigilant law enforcement officer, lately has borne a bit of a frown.
Seems he's rightfully none too pleased with a trend he's noticed whereby convicts are paroled far earlier than their original sentences.
He said he sees this revolving door frequently in his county and others. Montgomery doesn't necessarily fault the state parole board as much as the Legislature for not acting to tighten down on the laws that permit early releases for criminals.
One example that chaps the sheriff more so than others involves 27-year-old Michael Haddock of Southaven, Miss., who was sentenced in August to five years in prison following his conviction for negligent homicide. That's a Class B felony punishable by not less than five nor more than 20 years plus a fine.
Yet Haddock already is parole-eligible. "We continue to let more and more people out of prison for various reasons, including the cost of maintaining them," Montgomery told me.
"But no one ever wants to bring up, or talk about, the cost to the victim. He is still there [imprisoned] at the moment and will come up [for possible release] at his parole hearing in December. If you read the case, the incident happened in May. He was convicted in August and given five years and it's already up for his parole hearing two months later."
The police report and other records show Haddock admitted that he killed 26-year-old Brandy Lynn Honeycutt in her driveway in Big Flat. That occurred after he, the victim and her husband consumed as many as three bottles of alcohol during the day.
The sheriff's office received a call about 12:20 a.m. on May 18 saying a woman was trapped beneath a vehicle on Arkansas 14. Emergency personnel and a deputy headed for the home of Brandy and Daniel Honeycutt.
Haddock's grandmother and the victim's husband initially told deputy Cpl. Rockie Morrell at the scene that Brandy had been trying to change a flat on Haddock's car when the jack failed and trapped her beneath the car where she died.
But Morrell wasn't biting that for several obvious reasons.
First, all the tires on Haddock's car were inflated. Brandy's body also was completely beneath the car, hardly a position one assumes to change a tire. Finally, first responders said the scissor jack near the wheel wasn't deployed and didn't have weight resting on it.
A few hours later, Haddock's grandmother showed up at the sheriff's office to provide a formal statement and the truth finally spilled out.
It seems she and grandson Michael had been staying at a friend's home just over a mile away when Michael left for some time. Upon returning, the police report says, an intoxicated Michael, who'd arrived on foot, said to call an ambulance because Brandy had been badly hurt after he'd run over her at the Honeycutts'.
They headed to the scene. After rousing Daniel Honeycutt from slumber on his couch, the report says Haddock and Honeycutt tried using jacks gathered from around the property to get her from beneath the car.
Daniel claimed he'd fallen asleep and was unaware of anything until the grandmother and Michael came banging on his door.
Michael Haddock told police he, Daniel and Brandy had been drinking heavily when they all went out to get in Haddock's car. Daniel climbed in the front passenger's side, Haddock claimed, and Haddock assumed Brandy was already in the back seat. She wasn't.
Instead, he allegedly backed up, then realized he'd struck something. Climbing out, he found Brandy beneath the car.
Haddock said he then walked just over a mile to the house where he and his grandmother had been staying to summon help and explain what had happened. (I had to wonder at this point if not one of these people had a cell phone, or a landline in the Honeycutts' place.)
In trekking that mile as Brandy lay dying, Haddock passed three closer neighbors with phones where he could have called for help, the investigator noted. Asked about that, Haddock said he was trying to reach his family. And he admitted to being intoxicated, which he also blamed for fuzzy logic and a faulty memory of events that night.
Montgomery believes changes in state law are needed to repair the hinges on this flopping door on our justice system. "While this case is not one of them, there are many cases where the parole board's hands have been tied by our Legislature and they have no authority to deny parole," he said. "This case is not unique. I, along with other sheriffs, see them cross my desk several times every month, and we are just one county out of 75."
So how about it, Legislature? Gonna step to the plate here or continue the woefully inadequate and nonsensical status quo?
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 11/05/2016