Numerous parole violations return sex offender to prison
A Craighead County man convicted in the rape and kidnapping of a 13-year-old girl in 2016 was ordered back to prison for six months Thursday for numerous violations of the terms of his supervised release.
Hank Crawford, 33, of Jonesboro, appeared in federal court in Little Rock before U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. for a revocation hearing that was rescheduled after he failed to show up in court in December
Crawford was federally indicted in April 2016 on one count each of travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct and transportation of a minor to engage in criminal sexual activity.
He and another man, Mickey Young, then 63, were arrested by police in Osceola on Sept. 9, 2015, when they dropped off a 13-year-old girl at home after they had picked her up two days earlier.
Young pleaded guilty in Osceola District Court to kidnapping in 2016 and was sentenced to two years in the Arkansas Department of Corrections.
Crawford pleaded guilty in federal court in March 2017 to travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct. On July 11, 2017, he was sentenced to 84 months in federal prison by U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright and ordered to serve five years on supervised release after leaving prison.
His supervision began on Feb. 18, 2022. Crawford’s case was transferred to Marshall following Wright’s retirement
Crawford was escorted into the courtroom Thursday by federal marshals from the Greene County jail in Paragould, where he has been jailed since Dec. 28, after a bond hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Edie Ervin, and was seated next to his attorney, Assistant Public Defender Arkie Byrd.
A revocation petition alleged 19 separate release violations beginning with the use of marijuana and methamphetamine in April and again in August 2022.
Crawford also faced numerous allegations of having failed to report to sex offender counseling and polygraph testing, of accessing and viewing adult pornography and accessing websites containing adult material, online gaming sites and social media networking sites that allow children, and of possessing a cellphone without permission that was later found to contain nearly 2,000 images and videos of adult pornography.
Crawford admitted to all of the violations including three allegations of being in the presence of minor children without permission from the U.S. Probation Office.
He explained to Marshall that the children in question were two nieces and a nephew ranging in age from 3 to 8 years old who were living in the home where he was first released.
“The only time I was around any minors, it was my nieces and nephew,” Crawford explained. “The residence I was paroled out to when I was released from the Bureau of Prisons, they was already living at the residence because the mother and father was both in the state penitentiary.”
Crawford said his first probation officer had no issue with the situation as long as any contact was supervised.
“It’s admitted but your officer approved,” Marshall said, “is that correct?”
Noting that Crawford’s recommended guideline punishment ranged from three to nine months in prison, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kristin Bryant asked Marshall to sentence Crawford to the maximum, pointing out that his violations began not long after his release from prison in February 2022.
“By April of 2022 he was using marijuana and methamphetamine as well as accessing the internet,” she said. “Not just accessing the internet but accessing pornography websites.”
Bryant said she was concerned that Crawford had established a history of accessing social media websites, gaming platforms and pornography, as well as failing to show up for counseling and polygraph sessions that began just two months into his period of supervised release.
She said of two instances in which Crawford admitted to accessing internet capable cellphones without permission or knowledge of the probation office were done to circumvent his condition that any cell phone or internet capable device be monitored.
She also pointed out that Crawford’s failure to appear at his December revocation hearing had forced federal marshals to locate and arrest him in order to get him to come to court.
“He’s shown he’s not going to abide by any conditions of release because he’s not interested in doing it,” Bryant said.
Byrd, pointing out that Crawford has been in jail at the Greene County jail since his arrest, asked for a sentence of less than the top of the guideline range, but said it was important that Crawford be placed where he would have access to sex offender specific treatment as well as substance abuse and mental health counseling that she said is not available in most county jails.
“If he’s to come out and have a shot at getting better,” Byrd said, “I don’t have a perfect answer to this but I do know treatment is necessary for Mr. Crawford, and while languishing in jail satisfies the requirements of the judicial system … it does nothing but mete out punishment for punishment’s sake.”
“I understand I broke multiple laws,” Crawford said when given the opportunity to speak. “I should have made better choices.”
In addition to six months in prison for the release violations, Marshall ordered Crawford to serve four years of supervised release after he leaves prison.