Arkansas Court of Appeals reverses Circuit Court ruling

June 30, 2011

Arkansas: Yesterday the Arkansas Court of Appeals released a number of opinions. One of them was a reversal of an earlier Second Circuit Court ruling from November 2008. At that time, the Circuit Court found Otis Wade guilty of a Class Y felony and sentenced him to sixty months of probation. In February 2010, the State during a hearing argued to revoke Wade's sentence, which was exchanged for 300 month in prison. In the appellate court, Wade and his attorneys contended that Wade was illegally sentenced, since probation was not an optional sentence for a Class Y felony. In the opinion written by Josephine Hart, the Court of Appeals found in favor of Wade and sent the case back to the trial court. The trial court must assign a sentence permissible under state law.