Rice v. State

• Court: Arkansas Court of Appeals
• Writing for the Court: BRANDON J. HARRISON, Judge
• Citation: 715 S.W.3d 537,2025 Ark. App. 364
• Docket Number: CR-24-543
• Decision Date: 04 June 2025
• Parties: Cesaire RICE, Appellant v. STATE of Arkansas, Appellee

715 S.W.3d 537

2025 Ark. App. 364

Cesaire RICE, Appellant

v.STATE of Arkansas, Appellee

No. CR-24-543

Court of Appeals of Arkansas, DIVISION III.

Opinion Delivered June 4, 2025

APPEAL FROM THE PULASKI COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT, SEVENTH DIVISION [NO. 60CR-21-992], HONORABLE KAREN D. WHATLEY, JUDGE

Short Law Firm, by: Lee D. Short, for appellant.

Tim Griffin, Att’y Gen., by: Rebecca Kane, Ass’t Att’y Gen., for appellee.

BRANDON J. HARRISON, Judge

₁A Pulaski County jury convicted Cesaire Rice of committing a terroristic act causing serious injury or death in violation. of Ark. Code Ann. § 5-13-310(a)(l) (Repl. 2024) and manslaughter, Ark. Code Ann. § 5-10-104(a)(3) (Repl. 2024), with a firearm enhancement for both. It acquitted him of second-degree murder. Rice filed a timely motion under Ark. R. Crim. P. 33.3(c) seeking to vacate his conviction for terroristic act because, he argues, the jury’s finding that he committed a terroristic act by “[s]hooting] at … a conveyance which is being operated or which is occupied by another person with the purpose to cause injury to another person” (emphasis added) is inconsistent with its finding that he committed manslaughter by “recklessly caus[ing] the death of’ the victim, Jacob Robinson.

Rice concedes there is no constitutional double-jeopardy violation. And he should. It is settled that any inconsistent finding the acquittal of second-degree murder might imply ₂would get him nowhere. United States v. Powell, 469 U.S. 57, 105 S.Ct. 471, 83 L.Ed.2d 461 (1984); Mercouri v. State, 2016 Ark. 37, 480 S.W.3d 864.

Rice points instead to a statute that prohibits inconsistent verdicts of conviction (not acquittal):

(a) When the same conduct of a defendant may establish the commission of more than one (1) offense, the defendant may be prosecuted for each such offense. However, the defendant may not be convicted of more than one (1) offense if:

….

(3) Inconsistent findings of fact are required to establish the commission of the offenses.

Ark. Code Ann. § 5-l-110(a)(3) (Repl. 2024). The circuit court ruled that, “[w]hile the jury found the defendant’s actions recklessly caused the death of Jacob Robinson, the evidence presented at trial supports a finding that the defendant shot at the defendant’s vehicle with the purpose to cause physical injury.” The offenses thus “ha[d] different elements the State had to prove.”

Rice appealed. On appeal, the State accepts his premise that section 5-1-110(a)(3) could apply on the facts. But it argues the convictions did not require inconsistent findings because by statute, “[w]hen acting recklessly suffices to establish an element, [as with manslaughter,] the element is also established if a person acts purposely or knowingly.” Ark. Code Ann. § 5-2-203(c)(2) (Repl. 2024). That is, in a prosecution for an offense that requires reckless conduct, the State could fail to convict by undershooting the mens rea element, but could not overshoot it by proving knowing or purposeful conduct instead. So it contends the conviction of reckless manslaughter is not necessarily inconsistent with a ₃finding that purposeful conduct caused Robinson’s death. See Cole v. State, 33 Ark. App. 98, 103, 802 S.W.2d 472, 476 (1991) (“[S]ince the evidence in this case was sufficient to warrant a conviction of the greater offense on both counts, appellant is in no position to complain of the jury’s having extended him greater leniency than he was entitled to.”).

[1] This issue appears to be one of first impression in Arkansas.¹ We conclude it is unnecessary, if not advisory, to decide how section 5-l-110(a)(3) applies to these convictions. They appear to rest on legally distinct conduct (that is, multiple gun shots), not “the same conduct,” so a premise in subsection (a) for applying any of its subparts is missing. But if we’re wrong about that, we would hold that the convictions did not require “inconsistent findings of fact” under subdivision (a)(3), either.

I.

The evening of 14 January 2021, Rice and his lifelong friends Charles McCollum, Anthony Williams, and Jerrice Stout left Williams’s apartment on University Avenue in Little Rock for Stout’s uncle’s apartment on John Barrow Road. They played video games there.

Late that afternoon, McCollum had called Rice and Stout in an excited state. He told them that “Jake Robinson and his crew” had just fired shots at his vehicle. Rice had been en route to McCollum’s apartment when he got the call; when Rice arrived, McCollum showed him bullet holes in his car. Rice had been aware of Robinson, who ₄followed him on Instagram. Instagram posts show Robinson with a cigar in one hand and, in the other, what police called a “Draco”—functionally an AK-47 rifle but smaller in form to allow one handed use. Face, sleeve, and neck tattoos made Robinson easy to recognize. And Rice was about to recognize him.

Stout needed to visit his girlfriend in Otter Creek. His tags were expired, and his gas tank was on “E.” So he asked his friends to follow him to the MAPCO convenience store at the corner of Kanis Road and John Barrow Road, less than a minute’s drive away. They took three separate vehicles. All of them were armed. It was after 11:00 p.m. Stout went into the store to get snacks, followed by Williams. Rice and McCollum had pulled up to a gas pump in the second row from the store and were still outside.

As Williams was entering the store, Robinson was leaving it. Surveillance video shows him get in the driver’s seat of a white Toyota Camry parked at a pump in the row closer to the store, one pump removed from Rice and McCollum. Then the shooting began. Robinson was shooting from inside the car out; McCollum was shooting from outside the car in. Rice joined in, firing from behind a car across from Robinson’s. Robinson’s shots, at least, were penetrating the Camry’s door.

A customer who was caught in the crossfire testified that McCollum shot first. He did not see Robinson until he got out of the vehicle. Robinson “was just kind of scared … he just got out, started firing back, and started running.” Surveillance video shows him open the car door about eight seconds after the first shot is heard and run away from the store, out of the video frame, shooting as he goes. Rice and McCollum had left the frame ₅already; Rice ran east on Kanis and McCollum ran across it. Audible gunshots continued for six more seconds.

Rice was tried separately. He testified that he started shooting at Robinson because Robinson was shooting at him. Williams, who was firing his 9mm from near MAPCO’s front door, said he heard shots, saw Robinson running, and started shooting because he thought Robinson was chasing down Rice and McCollum. McCollum did not testify.

Around 11:15 p.m., police responded to reports of shots fired. Little Rock Police Officer Walter Riddick found Robinson lying in a lane of travel on Kanis Road, about a block away from the MAPCO store, near a patch of blood in the grass. Police recovered five .40-caliber shell casings from Kanis Road nearby. Robinson died at Baptist Health Medical Center the same night.

Dr. Jennifer Forsyth, a forensic pathologist at the Arkansas State Crime Laboratory, testified that Robinson was hit three times in unknown order. A bullet of unknown caliber passed through his left wrist and was not recovered. She recovered two .40-caliber bullets from his body. One went through the flesh of Robinson’s right thigh and lodged there. One entered his left hip region, hit the pelvic bone, and came up through his body cavity, passing through the big vessels that come off the aorta into the pelvic region. She recovered that bullet from his abdomen. All three wounds contributed to his death, she testified. But the bullet that entered near his left hip was “the most significant one with the most bleeding,” Almost two liters of blood, “close to a third of [Robinson’s] entire blood volume [wa]s in his abdominal cavity.” The cause of death was “multiple gunshot wounds.”

₆Including those recovered from Kanis Road, officers found sixty-one shell casings of four different calibers at the scene. They included Robinson’s 7.62mm rifle casings; Williams’s 9mm casings; .40 caliber casings from the rounds that at least Rice was firing; and 5.7mm casings that were not directly tied to anyone but, from their location, were probably McCollum’s. Stout claimed he never left the store.

Steve Hargis, a firearms and toolmark examiner at the crime lab, testified that the two .40-caliber bullets recovered from Robinson’s body were different: one had a brass full-metal jacket; one had a copper jacket. He could not confirm or rule out that they were fired from the same gun. No shell casings were submitted for his review.

The State had charged Rice with capital murder, terroristic act, and first-degree battery. But the circuit court granted a directed verdict on capital murder and first-degree murder at the close of the evidence. It found that even construing the evidence most favorably to the State, then was no substantial evidence that Rice act ed with either a premeditated and deliberate purpose, or purposefully in causing Robinson’s death.² The court instructec the jury on second-degree murder and the lesser-included offenses of manslaughter and negligent homicide, as well as terroristic act and the firearm enhancement. At the State’s request, it gave Arkansas Model Jury Instruction-Criminal 401 on accomplice liability. An accompanying instruction charged the jury that “[w]hen two or more persons are criminally responsible for an offense, each person is liable only for the degree of the offense that is consistent with the person’s own culpable mental state.” AMI Crim. 2d 405.

₇II.

As we noted already, Rice does not contend his convictions violate constitutional double jeopardy, only a subpart of section 5-1-110(a) that prohibits convictions for multiple offenses for “the same conduct of a defendant” if they require “[i]nconsistent findings of fact.” Ark. Code...