Arkansas Supreme Court remands Justin Mays appeal after jury-verdict forms missing from record

The Arkansas Supreme Court on Oct. 24, 2024, ordered that the appeal of Justin Mays be remanded to the Pulaski County Circuit Court to settle and supplement the record after the court found that jury-verdict forms were not included in the circuit-court record. The court gave Mays 30 days from the opinion date to file a supplemental record.

The decision followed Mays’s conviction by a Pulaski County jury on one count of capital murder, two counts of terroristic act and one count of first-degree battery. The circuit court sentenced Mays to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole plus a 120-month enhancement, to run consecutively, citing Arkansas Code Annotated section 16-90-120(a)–(b) (Repl. 2016).

The Supreme Court said Arkansas Supreme Court Rule 3-4(c)(2) requires verdict forms be inserted in the record when there is a jury trial and noted this court’s independent-review obligation under Ark. Sup. Ct. R. 4-3(a) in life-and-death cases. To remedy the omission, the opinion directed the remand under the procedures of Ark. R. App. P.–Civil 6(e), as applied through Ark. R. App. P.–Criminal 4(a), and cited Ross v. State, 2024 Ark. 70.

The opinion, issued per curiam, encouraged review of the appellate rules to ensure no other deficiencies exist in the record. The circuit-court case number for the underlying matter is 60CR-21-3881; the circuit judge who presided below was the Hon. Karen D. Whatley. Counsel of record listed in the opinion includes the James Law Firm (William O. “Bill” James, Jr., and Drew Curtis) for the appellant and Attorney General Tim Griffin (by Michael Zangari, assistant attorney general) for the state.

The remand does not alter the convictions or sentence in the opinion itself; it instructs the lower court to supplement the appellate record so this court can complete its independent review. Mays has thirty days from the opinion date to submit the supplemental record to the Supreme Court.