Arkansas Online

LR man gets 20-year term in fentanyl case

Judge denies plea withdrawal request

DALE ELLIS

A Pulaski County man acting as his own attorney was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison as a career offender Wednesday after a request to withdraw his guilty plea was denied.

Rashaun Ladale Williams, 43, of Little Rock pleaded guilty to two counts of drug possession with intent to distribute, the same day he was to have gone on trial on a three-count indictment charging him with possession with intent to deliver cocaine, fentanyl and marijuana. Following his guilty plea last May, Assistant U.S. Attorney Anne Gardner moved to dismiss the marijuana distribution count but notified the court that the government would only agree to a two-point reduction for acceptance of responsibility in the total offense level that would affect Williams’ sentencing range. Because he entered his plea as the jury pool waited in the courthouse for jury selection, Gardner said at that time a third point reduction was off the table.

Last month, John Wesley

Hall Jr. — Williams’ third attorney since his Sept. 3, 2020, arrest by Little Rock police — filed a motion to be relieved after he received a letter from Williams accusing Hall of working with the government to get him a longer sentence than he felt like he deserved.

According to Williams’ plea agreement, when he was stopped for speeding by Little Rock police in September 2020, he gave the officer a South Carolina driver’s license in the name of Donovan Williams that could not be verified. Arkansas State Police were called to bring a fingerprint scanner, which returned Williams’ true identity. A search of the Cadillac Escalade Williams was driving turned up nearly $20,000 in cash, after which Williams consented to a search of his apartment at 2216 Wilson Rd. in Little Rock.

A search of the apartment and a Cadillac sedan parked in the garage yielded more than $150,000 in cash, nearly 9,000 pills later found to contain fentanyl, a kilogram of cocaine, a vacuum sealer, a scale and a money counter.

In his motion to be relieved, Hall wrote that Williams had written him a letter objecting to his pre-sentencing report and his reported criminal history, which placed him in the category of being a career offender. According to the letter Williams sent to Hall, that designation more than doubled his guideline sentencing range for the charged conduct from 130162 months in prison to a range of 292-365 months in prison.

Gardner noted that the current offense was Williams’ sixth conviction for cocaine trafficking.

Williams protested to U.S. District Judge Billy Roy Wilson that he was misled when he pleaded guilty to the two counts in the indictment and argued that he should be allowed to withdraw his guilty plea and go to trial on the indictment instead.

“He explained to me that I was not a career offender and I would get a third point at sentencing,” Williams said. “He told me I’m supposed to count the time I was incarcerated and I was released from prison in 2004, so that makes it like 16 years old, and then he told me by me cooperating that I’d get the third point and another reduction regardless, so the deal was good regardless. He told me I should take the deal because I’d get 25 years if I didn’t take the deal.”

Williams claimed that the plea deal he agreed to, which he said he was shown the day that he entered the plea, was different from an earlier plea deal he had been offered.

“He never went over nothing with me,” Williams said. “I didn’t never see him for nine months while I sat at the county jail … He really made my problem even worse than it already was.”

Williams alternately claimed that Hall had urged him to take the plea and that he urged him to go to trial, and said while he was distracted by the death of his mother, a superseding indictment was handed up charging him with the fentanyl count.

“I didn’t even know it was fentanyl,” he said. “It looked like f*****g — I mean, excuse me — it looked like oxy pills, but I don’t know, I wasn’t represented correctly.”

“We’ve been trying to resolve this case for a number of years,” Gardner said. “We thought we had it resolved with [Williams’ former attorney, Greg Bryant] and he fired his former attorney and retained Mr. Hall.”

Gardner said she attempted to resolve the case through the same agreement made with Bryant but said negotiations broke down and the government began trial preparations in anticipation of taking the matter before a jury.

“Then he told his lawyer he would enter a plea, and this is the agreement he pleaded to,” she said.

“So what do you want me to do?” Wilson asked.

“I ask you to uphold the plea,” she said. “He said he understood the plea agreement. He said that he was voluntarily and intentionally entering into it … that he was satisfied with his counsel. If he objected, he should have objected at that time.”

Wilson denied Williams’ motion to withdraw his plea and noted that his offense level, with a two point reduction, would be a 35 and his criminal history score of 20 would place him in Criminal History Category VI, the highest on the sentencing grid, and that he would be sentenced as a career offender.

Gardner conceded that the low end sentence of 292 months — 24 years, 4 months — “is a lot of time,” and said if Wilson wished to vary downward to 20 years, she would not object. Wilson agreed to the downward variance.

“I note that Mr. Williams objects to everything, so I preserve his objections,” Wilson said.

“Was the offer real?” Williams protested. “I didn’t get no kind of reduction?”

“You got a reduction down to 240 months,” Wilson replied, as he adjourned the hearing.

Arkansas

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2022-08-11T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-08-11T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://edition.arkansasonline.com/article/282252374304653

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