Fugitive sentenced to 2 extra years
Posted on Saturday, October 11, 2008
FORT SMITH — A Van Buren man who fled to Los Angeles in February to avoid federal prison and sex crimes prosecutions in Washington and Crawford counties was sentenced to two years in prison Friday in U. S. District Court.
James Clayton Solomon, 39, was sentenced by U. S. District Judge Jimm L. Hendren after he pleaded guilty in May for failing to report to federal prison April 2. He was to begin serving a five-year sentence for violating his supervised release from a 1999 drug conspiracy conviction in federal court in eastern Oklahoma.
The supervised release violations, the government said, consisted of a rape charge filed against him in Washington County Circuit Court on June 12 and two counts of second-degree sexual assault filed against him in Crawford County Circuit Court on June 21.
In the Washington County case, he was accused of raping a woman at his Bodies for Christ Training Center in Springdale. A circuit court jury convicted him in July of rape and failure to appear. He was sentenced to 35 years in prison on the rape charge and 15 years on the failure to appear charge. Ten of the 15 years are to be served consecutively with the rape sentence.
On Friday, Hendren ordered that the federal sentence Solomon received on the failure to appear charge be served consecutively with the other sentences.
An official in the Crawford County prosecuting attorney’s office said Friday the charges against Solomon were dismissed in light of the federal and Washington County sentences.
Federal marshals said earlier this year that Solomon had left a suicide note before fleeing to Los Angeles where he changed his name and appearance.
Parking violations in Los Angeles led to his arrest in April. After buying a car from a man in Arkansas, he failed to change the registration, which was in the name of the previous owner. When Los Angeles officials contacted the previous owner about the parking violations, he notified the U. S. Marshals Service office in Fort Smith.
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