Deundrea Mathis v. State of Arkansas, 616 S.W.3d 274

Mathis was convicted of theft by receiving in 2012 (120 days jail, five years probation); probation was later revoked in 2014 and he received an 18-month regional sentence plus a five-year suspended imposition of sentence (SIS) with conditions forbidding crimes punishable by imprisonment and firearm possession.
In June 2019 the State petitioned to revoke Mathis’s SIS alleging drug offenses, possession of drug paraphernalia, theft by receiving, and felon-in-possession of a firearm.
Officer Victoria Evans responded to a suspicious-persons call, encountered Mathis at a blue car, learned he was on parole, and performed a parole search that uncovered suspected cocaine residue in the console and a rifle with a magazine of ten rounds in the back seat; Evans testified the vehicle’s registration returned to Mathis.
Mathis contested the revocation at a hearing, denied being in the blue car, but did not object when the State offered the rifle into evidence (said “No objection”).
The circuit court revoked Mathis’s SIS and sentenced him to eight years in the Department of Correction; Mathis appealed arguing insufficient evidence because (1) the parole search was invalid, (2) he was not tied to the car or its contents, and (3) the State failed to prove he was a felon in possession of a firearm.

Issue	Mathis’s Argument	State’s Argument	Held
Legality of the parole search / admissibility of rifle	Search was unreasonable because officer had no reasonable belief of a parole violation; rifle should be suppressed	No contemporaneous objection was made at the revocation hearing; evidence admitted without objection	Waived on appeal; Mathis did not preserve suppression argument by failing to object at first opportunity
Sufficiency of evidence tying Mathis to the car/contents	Evans’s testimony conflicted with her report and dash-cam; inconsistencies make proof insufficient	Credibility and weight of testimony are matters for the trier of fact; Evans testified tag returned to Mathis and he was sole occupant	Court credited Evans’s testimony; contradictions go to weight, not grounds for reversal; revocation not clearly against preponderance
Proof of felon-in-possession (establishing prior felony)	Possession of a firearm alone is not illegal; State failed to introduce prior-sentence order to prove felony status	Court may take judicial notice of its own records showing Mathis’s prior guilty plea/conviction	Court took judicial notice of Mathis’s prior felony conviction in its file; State met burden to show felon status

Von Holt v. State, 524 S.W.3d 19 (State must prove violation of SIS by a preponderance to revoke)
Springs v. State, 525 S.W.3d 490 (proof of a single violation suffices to support revocation)
Daniels v. State, 588 S.W.3d 116 (revocation standard lower than criminal conviction; preponderance suffices)
Hazelwood v. State, 577 S.W.3d 39 (appellate deference to circuit court on credibility/weight of evidence)
Cherry v. State, 791 S.W.2d 354 (parole-search reasonableness standard)
Swanigan v. State, 984 S.W.2d 799 (failure to object at hearing waives suppression issue on appeal)
Porter v. State, 145 S.W.3d 376 (variances in testimony affect weight, not admissibility)
Jones v. State, 388 S.W.3d 503 (trier of fact resolves testimonial contradictions)
Collins v. State, 446 S.W.3d 199 (appellate courts defer to circuit court credibility findings)
St. Joseph’s Mercy Med. Ctr. v. Redmond, 388 S.W.3d 45 (judicial notice as part of evidence law)
Parker v. Sims, 51 S.W.2d 517 (courts may take judicial notice of their own records)

Outcome: Affirmed.