Supreme Court upholds murder conviction

JONESBORO — The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the first-degree murder conviction of a man accused of shooting a woman 10 times inside her Jonesboro home.

A Craighead County Circuit Court jury on March 11, 2022 convicted Corey McCullon, now 35, of Trumann, of firstdegree murder, aggravated residential burglary, terroristic act, and first-degree terroristic threatening. He was sentenced as a habitual offender to concurrent sentences of 35 years in prison for the murder, 10 years for the burglary, five years for the terroristic act and one year for threatening.

This sentence was imposed to run consecutively to two sentence enhancements – 15 years for the use of a firearm in committing the murder – and 10 years for committing the murder in the presence of a child. That brought the total sentence to 60 years.

McCullon killed Keisha Criglar, 29, on Nov. 30, 2019 in front of her 7-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son, police said.

He was later captured by police in Caruthersville, Mo.

McCullon argued that there was insufficient evidence to convict him, that the court shouldn’t have allowed the children to identify him as the killer during the trial and that the firearms enhancements amounted to double jeopardy.

He also challenged the fact that the jury pool of 64 people only included four African Americans.

Testimony in the case indicated that McCullen had been harassing Criglar over money he said she owed.

After learning of the murder, Criglar’s mother provided police with McCullon’s name and cellphone number. After obtaining a warrant, investigators were able to trace McCullon’s movements before and after the attack and directed Missouri police where to find him. Police also recovered a .40 caliber firearm with active rounds consistent with bullet casings found at the crime scene on Meadow Brook Street.

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Judge blocks Arkansas law that gave board ability to fire state corrections secretary

LITTLE ROCK — An Arkansas judge on Friday blocked a new law that took away the Board of Corrections’ authority over the state corrections secretary and other top officials, the latest in an escalating feud between the panel and Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders over the prison system.

Pulaski County Circuit Judge Patricia James granted the board’s request for a temporary restraining order the day after the panel filed a lawsuit and suspended Corrections Secretary Joe Profiri with pay. The board argued that the law violated the state’s constitution by usurping its authority and giving the governor hiring and firing authority over the corrections secretary.

Sanders appointed Profiri to the post, and he was confirmed by the panel earlier this year.

The move follows the Sanders’ administration’s plans to move forward with opening hundreds of new temporary prison beds that the board had not approved.

Members of the board have said opening the temporary beds would jeopardize the safety of inmates and staff.

Arkansas’ prisons are currently above capacity, with more than 1,600 additional state inmates being held in county jails.

“Absent relief, (the board) will suffer immediate and irreparable harm because Defendants caused additional beds to be added to inadequate prison facilities,” James wrote. The law blocked by James also would have given Profiri, not the board, hiring and firing authority over the correction and community correction divisions.

James set a Dec. 28 hearing over the lawsuit. Attorney General Tim Griffin was reviewing the order and preparing a response, a spokesman said.

Alexa Henning, a spokeswoman for Sanders, said the governor would work with Griffin to “respond appropriately in court, end the policy of catch and early release of dangerous criminals, and defend the safety of Arkansans.” The ruling came the same day Griffin filed a lawsuit against the board, accusing it of violating the state’s Freedom of Information Act when it approved hiring an outside attorney to represent it. Griffin’s lawsuit also claims the board did not follow the law in its response to an FOI request he sent over the attorney’s hiring. “The Board of Corrections has shown a complete disregard for the law, so I am asking the court to step in to compel compliance,” Griffin, a Republican, said in a news release.

Abtin Mehdizadegan, the board’s attorney, said the panel followed the FOI law and criticized Griffin’s lawsuit.

“This appears to me to be political retribution and abject weaponization of the attorney general’s office to effect that political retribution,” Mehdizadegan said.

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LITTLE ROCK — The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), which is the only hospital in the state performing adult liver and kidney transplants, now offers pancreas transplants.

Raj Patel, M.D., surgical director of pancreas transplantation at UAMS, successfully completed the first combined kidney-pancreas transplant in Arkansas on Sept. 1.

The 27-year-old patient was an insulin-dependent Type 1 diabetic on dialysis for kidney failure who had been fighting for survival since her early teens. She is now free of both insulin and dialysis and has returned to her normal activities, Patel said.

Arkansans in need of pancreas transplants previously had to leave Arkansas to have the procedure and to receive follow- up care, with the closest transplant centers located in Memphis, Dallas or St. Louis.

Now, UAMS surgeons perform the transplant on the main Little Rock campus and provide preliminary and follow- up care in Little Rock and at a growing network of satellite clinics in Fayetteville, Jonesboro, Texarkana, Pine Bluff, Fort Smith and Helena-West Helena.

“UAMS is dedicated to meeting the needs of our patients and communities,” said Lyle Burdine, M.D., director of solid organ transplants.

“Whenever patients have to leave the state for treatment, it creates a hardship for them and their families. We are grateful to be able to expand our services to include pancreas transplants.”

Patel said many Arkansas patients needing pancreas transplants are on Medicaid or Medicare, both of which

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cover the procedure.

Still, he said, UAMS expects to perform only “a handful” of the procedures. Such transplants are rare because the pancreas is “a finicky organ,” the donor criteria is very precise, and the procedure is delicate, which can lead to complications, he said. In addition, constant improvements in insulin pumps make pancreas transplants less necessary by giving diabetics better sugar control, which lessens the need for insulin and helps their kidneys last longer.

“Right now, we are only doing kidney- pancreas transplants,” Patel said, noting that dual-organ transplants from the same donor have been shown to benefit patients more than pancreas transplants by themselves.

The primary recipients will be Type 1 diabetics, though Patel said the transplants might eventually become available for Type 2 diabetics as well.

The process generally takes four to five hours and includes removing the donor organs, implanting them separately in the recipient through a single incision and restoring blood flow to the area. That was the case for the recipient of the first kidney-pancreas transplant, who was discharged a week later and whose lab results during follow-up outpatient visits “look really good,” Patel said.

He said that because the waiting list is shorter for people who need both a kidney and a pancreas transplant, as opposed to a kidney transplant alone, UAMS’ decision to start doing pancreas transplants is also helping kidney patients move more quickly up a long waiting list. The first transplant patient was on a waiting list for about a month.

Before performing pancreas transplants, UAMS had to meet stringent certification requirements by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), which administers the country’s organ procurement and transplantation network. Among the requirements are that a medical center have in place both a transplant surgeon and a nephrologist who have performed a pancreas transplant within one year.

The requirement was met with the hiring in late 2022 of Martha Michelle Estrada, M.D., a board-certified transplant/ hepatobiliary surgeon. Patel, a fellowship-trained transplant surgeon who specializes in treating diseases of the kidney, liver and pancreas, said he also refreshed his training by recently assisting with a pancreas transplant.

The Scientific Registry for Transplant Recipients (SRTR), which evaluates transplant programs for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, recently ranked UAMS’ kidney and liver transplant programs among the highest in the nation in categories that have the largest impact on patients’ survival. The kidney transplant program ranked third among 256 programs, while the liver transplant program ranked fourth among 149 programs.

Both received five out of five bars for the speed at which patients obtain transplants after being listed. In addition, the kidney transplant program received five bars for patient survivability one year after transplant, while the liver transplant program scored four bars for survivability one year after transplant.