The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a claim by a convicted sex offender that he was punished twice for the same offense.
Associate Justice Nicholas J. Bronni said Jefferson County Judge Jodi Raines Dennis did not violate did not violate either double jeopardy or relevant state law when she denied a request for a writ of mandamus and judicial relief.
Russell Alexander Geaslin was convicted of sexual assault in 2008 and was later released from prison. As a convicted sex offender, he is required to report his address and any address change. In 2019 he was convicted of failing to report an address change and fleeing from law enforcement and was paroled for those offenses in 2022.
After his release, he changed addresses, moved in with a woman who supervised her young granddaughter, and failed to report those changes. His parole was revoked.
He argued in the appeal that revoking his parole and charging him with failure to update his address amounts to a new punishment for the same offense.
Bronni wrote that in addition to Geslin violating his parole, the failure to update his address was a new crime and the state was entitled to prosecute him for the new offense
Additionally, Associate Justice Courtney Rae Hudson wrote that Geaslin waited too long to file an appeal of his 2023 conviction. That petition was not filed until April 2024 and was therefore untimely.
