Sex offender pleads not guilty

TEXARKANA — A man required to register as a sex offender pleaded not guilty in federal court for allegedly moving from Texarkana, Texas, to Texarkana, Ark., without notifying either city’s police department.

Terry Edward Doolittle Jr., 43, appeared on video for arraignment before U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Bryant in the Texarkana Division of the Western District of Arkansas. Doolittle also appeared for an initial appearance on a motion to revoke supervised release involving an earlier conviction for failing to register as a sex offender.

Doolittle has been in and out of federal and state prisons since being convicted in Syracuse, N.Y., in January 2008 of a sex crime involving a 13-year-old. The additional time behind bars stems from repeated violations of sex-offender reporting requirements.

At a 2016 hearing in federal court in Texarkana, Ark., Harrelson said Doolittle is “doing life on the installment plan.”

In 2017 Doolittle was charged in Miller County circuit court with failing to register as a sex offender. At around the same time, federal officials took action to address that allegation as a violation of his supervised release.

Doolittle pleaded guilty in Miller County and was sentenced Aug. 14, 2017, to three years in the Arkansas Department of Correction. In December of the same year, U.S. District Judge Susan Hickey ordered Doolittle to serve 12 months in federal prison for violating his supervised release and ordered he serve the time consecutively to the time he was serving in state court.

Doolittle was released from federal prison April 14. He allegedly told federal officials he was living with his father in Texarkana, Texas, and was instructed to register as a sex offender with that city’s police department. A federal probation officer was told by Doolittle’s father April 30 that Doolittle was living in Texarkana, Ark.