The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday gave a convicted rapist from Miller County another chance to have his 75-year sentence reviewed because the circuit judge who rejected the original appeal previously prosecuted the case.
According to his petition filed last year from prison, Paul Latham argued that the jury in his 1993 trial on a single count of rape wrongly imposed a sentence that went beyond the 40-year maximum for a Class Y felony.
Latham was convicted as a habitual offender. Prison records show that he was convicted of three counts of forgery in 1988.
That allowed the trial court to impose a sentence of up to life in prison, then-prosecutor Brent Haltom told the jury, according to Latham's court filings.
Latham appealed, asking that his sentence be reduced to 40 years. The appeal landed in the Texarkana courtroom assigned to Haltom, who is now a circuit judge.
Haltom denied Latham's case on its merits, saying the jury had been properly instructed on the sentencing guidelines for a habitual offender.
Latham appealed to the Arkansas Supreme Court, which ruled Thursday that Haltom's failure to recuse in the matter created a "serious appearance of impropriety."
Former prosecutors-turned-judges are not barred from hearing cases involving defendants they prosecuted for separate crimes, the high court said in an unsigned per curiam opinion.
However, it is an error for a judge to rule on a petition stemming from a case he originally handled as a prosecutor, the high court said.
The justices did not consider the merits of Latham's request. Instead, they sent his case back to circuit court to be heard by a different judge.
According to Department of Correction records, Latham is incarcerated at the Varner Unit, with a parole eligibility date of 2034.
Metro on 06/02/2017