Paroled killer pleads guilty to razor-blade threat at fraternity house
A twice-convicted killer accused of threatening a Little Rock college student with a razor blade outside a fraternity house near the University of Arkansas at Little Rock pleaded guilty Tuesday at his first circuit court appearance.
Parolee Barney Lee Doles, 59, was arrested in November by UALR police investigating a complaint about a suspicious person at the Kappa Sigma house on West 32nd Street. According to police reports, Doles pulled out the blue-blade razor when asked to leave the property and threatened to “gut” Christopher Stephens “like a fish.” Doles also was wanted on a parole-violation warrant, the report said.
Charged with making a terroristic threat, a Class D felony that carries up to 15 years in prison for a habitual offender like Doles, he pleaded guilty at his arraignment before Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza. Doles, who had been living in Conway at the time, has been returned to prison. He’ll be sentenced by the judge on March 8.
In September 1980, a 22-year-old Doles, who was living near Amity, shot and killed James “Sonny” Harris, 32, during an argument between the men at Doles’ Pike County home on Arkansas 84.
Court records show that Doles, Harris and Lisa Dean, who was living with Harris, had been drinking together before the men got into an argument in front of Doles’ home. Harris threatened Doles after he invited the woman inside and the men argued, with Doles complaining about the way Harris had been treating the woman.
Doles and his father testified that they both asked
Harris to leave because of his threat and that Doles shot the older man when Harris followed him inside the house. He was charged with first-degree murder and convicted at trial, receiving a 20-year sentence.
But the Arkansas Supreme Court overturned the verdict in 1982 and ordered a new trial over defense arguments that Doles had been wrongly barred by the trial judge from claiming self-defense.
He was tried again in Pike County, allowed to make his self-defense claim and was convicted of second-degree murder, receiving a 20-year sentence. That verdict was upheld by the high court in September 1983, the day afis
ter the third anniversary of the homicide.
In the years after Doles’ parole, he has received further convictions in Pike County for writing bad checks and at least three times for illegally having a gun as a felon.
But it was an April 2010 arrest in Clark County that led to his most recent incarceration and longest sentence, a 40-year term imposed by a jury after he pleaded guilty to being felon in possession of a firearm in September 2010. Prosecutors dropped an aggravated-assault charge after his guilty plea.
Court records show that sheriff’s deputies arrested Doles after responding to a 911 call by a woman, Ashley Crowley, who said he was threatening her with a shotgun.