Convicted ex-state senator seeks prison release

FORT SMITH — A former Arkansas state senator who pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering is asking to be released immediately from prison.

Republican Jake Files of Fort Smith filed the handwritten request Friday, one year after reporting to the federal prison in El Reno, Oklahoma, to serve an 18-month sentence.

The petition first reported by The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette says Files has no disciplinary incidents, led worship services and evaluated his past actions. Files asks

to spend his remaining time in home confinement and says he would seek to renew his real estate and general contractor licenses to search for employment and pay court-ordered restitution.

Files resigned from the state Senate in January 2018, a day after pleading guilty to charges of falsifying bids and pocketing thousands of dollars in state funds intended for construction of a sports complex.

Woman, murder conviction overturned, pleads guilty

JONESBORO — A northeast Arkansas woman whose murder conviction and life in prison sentence were overturned has pleaded guilty to the charge.

Court documents show

25-year-old Tonisha Mitchell of Jonesboro pleaded guilty Friday to first-degree murder and robbery as part of an agreement in which she was sentenced to

35 years in prison with credit for just more than three years already served.

A plea agreement signed by Mitchell said she pleaded guilty because she is “in truth, and in fact guilty.”

Mitchell was initially convicted in 2017 in the fatal 2015 shooting of Nelson McCullough in Jonesboro. The conviction was overturned by the Arkansas Supreme Court because the trial was closed to the public during the testimony of Mitchell’s aunt, who said Mitchell acknowledged to her that she shot McCullough.