Photo: Cody Robert Whitten
A state prison inmate at Calico Rock caught smuggling contraband obtained on work details in Mountain Home and brought into the facility appeared in Baxter County Circuit Court Thursday.
A trial date of May 4 has been set for 32-year-old Cody Robert Whitten of Ozark. Deputy Public Defender Sam Pasthing said he would ask the court to allow Whitten to remain in the Baxter County jail for several days so he could discuss evidence in the case with his client.
Whitten entered the prison system in August 2017 after being sentenced to 35-years for shooting a man in the head and killing him.
The shooting occurred in August 2016. Initially, Whitten did not deny he was involved in the shooting, but told several versions of how the victim was killed.
At one point, Whitten told investigators he and the victim were tossing the gun back and forth when it went off. Whitten admitted the gun was in his hand at the time of the shooting.
While an inmate in the North Central Unit, Whitten was assigned to a work crew responsible for cleaning city-owned park property in Mountain Home.
Prison officials reported receiving information that contraband was being brought into the facility by an inmate working in Mountain Home.
In late October last year, correction officers searched areas accessible to the crew while they were in Mountain Home. They discovered a large number of items in a shed used by the prisoners, including cellphones, chargers for cellphones, five individually wrapped bundles of smokeless tobacco and a full can of smokeless tobacco.
All of the items were concealed in two portable water containers.
During questioning, Whitten admitted to ownership of all the items and told investigators another inmate who had been working with him on the day the items were found was not involved in his smuggling operation.
Whitten is said to have admitted he used the cellphones to set up “tobacco drops.” He said he sneaked prohibited items inside the prison and sold them to other inmates in order to provide him with the ability to purchase more items from the commissary.
There is no elaboration as to how Whitten was able to sneak the contraband past guards at the prison when returning from work assignments.
Whitten said he had an unidentified person bring the cellphones to him at an area where he was working in Mountain home. He said he then used the phones to contact the unnamed individual to arrange the tobacco drops.
The other inmate told investigators Whitten apologized to him on the way back to the prison for getting the man in trouble over something he had nothing to do with.
In addition to new criminal charges, Whitten has been cited for major disciplinary violations at the prison involving the possession or manufacture of contraband items.
Whitten remains an inmate in the North Central Unit, according to the Arkansas Department of Correction Inmate Search website.
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