State briefs

Arkansas OK increases for marketplace insurers

LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas has approved average rate in-

creases ranging from 1 percent to 4.6 percent for plans offered through the insurance marketplace under the federal health care law.

The Insurance Department on Thursday announced the new rate increases for the plans for 2019. It approved a 4.6 percent average increase from Ambetter, 1.5 percent from QCA Health Plan, 1.06 percent from QualChoice Life and Health and 4.4 percent from Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield.

State Insurance Commissioner Allen Kerr says he believes the new rate increases showed stability in the insurance market. Last year, the department approved average rate increases ranging from 14.2 percent to 25 percent.

The rates apply to the state’s hybrid Medicaid expansion, which uses state and federal funds to purchase private insurance for low-income residents.

Man who served 30 years has conviction overturned

LITTLE ROCK — A judge has overturned an Arkansas man’s 1988 robbery and murder convictions and ordered prosecutors to either release or retry him.

District Court Judge Billy Roy Wilson granted a petition Tuesday by the Midwest Innocence Project, who appealed the convictions of John Brown. The group alleged the state withheld evidence that could have cast doubt on his guilt.

In 1992, Brown was convicted in the murder and robbery of an elderly woman in Fordyce, Arkansas. In 2015, one of Brown’s co-defendants confessed to being alone at the murder.

The Midwest Innocence Project claimed that Brown’s lawyer was “ineffective and corrupt.”

The judge vacated Brown’s convictions and gave the state 30 days to either release or retry Brown. A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office says officials are reviewing the decision.

Missing children found, mother arrested

BENTONVILLE — Authorities say four missing Arkansas children have been found in Oklahoma and the mother of the four was arrested.

Inspector Cory Thomas with the Western Arkansas Fugitive Task Force says the 1- to 7-yearold children were Thursday at an apartment complex in Owasso, Oklahoma.

The children’s mother —

29-year-old Lacee Pattengill — was arrested on a felony warrant of interference with custody.

Thomas said Pattengill fled the Bentonville area with the children the paternal grandparents were awarded temporary emergency custody earlier this month.

Jail records show Pattengill is being held in the Tulsa County jail pending extradition to Benton County, Arkansas.