Michael Wayne Hall v. State of Arkansas

Opinion

Cite as 2026 Ark. App. 405 ARKANSAS COURT OF APPEALS DIVISION I

No. CR-25-436

Opinion Delivered September 16, 2026

MICHAEL WAYNE HALL APPEAL FROM THE CRAWFORD APPELLANT COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT [NOS. 17CR-24-280; 17CR-24-281;

V. 17CR-24-332]

STATE OF ARKANSAS HONORABLE CANDICE A.

APPELLEE SETTLE, JUDGE

AFFIRMED; REMANDED TO

AMEND SENTENCING ORDER

BRANDON J. HARRISON, Judge Michael Wayne Hall appeals the revocation of his suspended imposition of sentence (SIS). He asserts that the circuit court erred in finding that he inexcusably violated the conditions of his SIS and in denying his motion to strike two conditions of his SIS as unconstitutional. We affirm and remand with instructions.

On 11 June 2024, the State charged Hall with first-degree terroristic threatening, aggravated assault on a family or household member, and third-degree domestic battery (17CR-24-280). In a separate information also filed on June 11, the State charged Hall with trafficking of persons, two counts of aggravated assault on a family or household member, third-degree domestic battery, and harassing communications (17CR-24-281). And on 5 July 2024, the State charged Hall with aggravated assault, first-degree terroristic threatening, third-degree domestic battery, and violation of a no-contact order (17CR-24-

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332). Briefly, the State alleged that Hall had threatened and physically abused two women and forced at least one of the women to participate in producing pornography.

In December 2024, Hall entered a plea agreement for all three cases in which he pled guilty to two counts of aggravated assault on a family or household member, one count of terroristic threatening, and one count of attempted trafficking of a person. Hall received an aggregate sentence of 120 days in county jail and a ten-year SIS. The special conditions of his SIS required him to have no contact with the victims, Jasmine Murray and Abrie Patterson, and to remove any photographs or videos depicting Jasmine Murray on any and all social media accounts to which he has access within ten days of the court’s order. The special conditions also included the following:

13. Defendant is prohibited from buying, selling, filming, participating in, directing, uploading, or transmitting pornography in any manner.

14. Defendant shall not entice, ask, suggest, or otherwise solicit any person to participate in pornography in any manner.

The court entered its order on 31 December 2024.

On 15 January 2025, the State petitioned to revoke Hall’s probation and alleged that he had committed new offenses of harassing communications and unlawful distribution of sexual images or recordings. The State also alleged that he had failed to remove a video of Jasmine Murray from his social media accounts as ordered and had asked, solicited, suggested, transmitted and/or engaged in pornography.

On 17 March 2025, Hall moved to strike conditions 13 and 14 of his SIS. He argued that the conditions violated his First Amendment rights and the Due Process Clause and are therefore unconstitutional. The next day, the parties appeared for a scheduled revocation

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hearing, and the court first heard arguments on Hall’s motion. Hall asserted that conditions 13 and 14 covered what is essentially expressive conduct that is protected by the First Amendment and should be subject to a “scrutiny analysis.” He also argued that the conditions are “void for vagueness” because “pornography” is not defined in the Arkansas Code or the conditions of suspension. He contended that “given the lack of specificity in it, it ought to be struck.”

The circuit court found that the conditions are “very specific” and “narrowly tailored to deter [Hall’s] future criminal conduct and protect the public.” The court agreed that the First Amendment was implicated but found that the language in the conditions “is narrow enough to try to prevent what he did from happening again to another victim.”

The court then proceeded with the revocation hearing. Jessica Sherrill, Jasmine Murray’s best friend, monitored Hall’s social media after he was sentenced on 31 December 2024 to make sure he removed all content involving Jasmine. Sherrill said that the majority of the content was removed but that one video on TikTok remained after the deadline imposed by the court.

Jonathan Arredondo, a Van Buren police officer, was notified that Hall may be in violation of one or more of his SIS conditions, so Arredondo obtained a search warrant for Hall’s Snapchat account. Arredondo discovered that Hall had solicited and received nude photos and videos from several women after his sentencing on 31 December 2024. He had also asked these women to provide copies of their IDs so he could verify their age. In particular, Hall communicated with a woman with the screen name YesIAmRykin and received pornographic photos and videos from her.

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Haley Bott testified that she began communicating with Hall on TikTok on 22 December 2024 and met him in person on December 31. A couple of days after they began communicating, Hall asked her to post videos and screenshots of Jasmine Murray to “damage her reputation and make her look bad.” Hall also asked her to send him nude photos of herself and sent her a video of himself masturbating. Hall visited her in New York in early January 2025 and showed her pornographic videos of Jasmine and other girls; Hall was in some of these videos as well.

Hall testified that before his arrests and guilty plea, he was employed mostly through OnlyFans and Fansly, which are pornography sites. But since his sentence began on 31 December 2024, he had not produced any professional pornography, nor had he posted any pornography to those sites. He understood the SIS conditions to mean that he could no longer make pornography. He did not consider receiving nude photos through “sexting” to be pornography: “I figured that was just like a daily part of every night—everybody’s life.” He denied showing pornographic videos of Jasmine Murray to Haley Bott. He did not deny sending Bott a video of him masturbating, but he did not consider that pornography. He agreed that there was a video of Jasmine on his TikTok after the ten-day deadline imposed by the court, but he explained that he had deleted well over a thousand videos and that he had not intentionally left that video posted.

The circuit court found that Hall was not credible and that “he had every intention of doing exactly what he did before and was doing exactly what he did before.” The court also found that Hall had violated the conditions of his SIS in several ways: (1) Hall’s communications with YesIamRykin were clearly designed to solicit pornographic pictures

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and videos; (2) Hall violated the specific order to take down any videos including Jasmine Murray from social media within ten days of the court’s order; (3) Hall downloaded four videos and/or pictures from YesIamRykin, which violated the provision that he not upload pornography; (4) Hall sent videos of himself to Haley Bott that were clearly pornographic; (5) Hall showed videos of Jasmine Murray and other girls, including pornography, to Haley Bott.

The circuit court sentenced Hill as follows. In 17CR-24-280, on the count of aggravated assault on a family or household member, the court sentenced Hall to six years’ imprisonment. In 17CR-24-281, on the count of attempted trafficking of a person, the court sentenced Hall to twenty years’ imprisonment;1 on the count of aggravated assault on a family or household member, the court sentenced Hall to six years’ imprisonment. And in 17CR-24-332, on the count of first-degree terroristic threatening, the court reinstated Hall’s six-year SIS. The court ran Hall’s prison sentences consecutively and the SIS concurrently with the prison sentences. Hall timely appealed.

To revoke an SIS, the circuit court must find by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant has inexcusably violated a condition of the probation or suspension. Springs v. State, 2017 Ark. App. 364, 525 S.W.3d 490. The State’s burden of proof in a

1 The State notes that because Hall was previously sentenced to 120 days on this count, the twenty-year sentence appears to exceed the statutory maximum. See Ark. Code Ann. § 16-93-308(g)(1)(B) (Supp. 2023) (“any sentence to pay a fine or of imprisonment, when combined with any previous fine or imprisonment imposed for the same offense, shall not exceed the limits”). We agree, and we remand with instructions to the circuit court to amend the sentencing order to reflect Hall’s previous sentence of 120 days for attempted trafficking.

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revocation proceeding is lower than that required to convict in a criminal trial, and evidence that is insufficient for a conviction may be sufficient for a revocation. Id. The State does not have to prove every allegation in its petition, and proof of only one violation is sufficient to sustain a revocation. Mathis v. State, 2021 Ark. App. 49, 616 S.W.3d 274. We will uphold the circuit court’s findings unless they are clearly against the preponderance of the evidence. Id. Because the determination of a preponderance of the evidence turns on questions of credibility and weight to be given to the testimony, we defer to the circuit court’s superior position to do so. Burgess v. State, 2021 Ark. App. 54.

Hall first argues that the circuit court erred in finding that he inexcusably violated the conditions of his SIS. While he admits that one video of Jasmine Murray had not been deleted from his social media as ordered, he asserts that the State never introduced any evidence that he was aware the video was still on TikTok. Also, he had deleted thousands of posts, so failing to remove one post should not be considered an “inexcusable” violation of his SIS conditions. Likewise, Hall asserts that “sexting” cannot be viewed as inexcusably violating the conditions of his SIS because he did not know he was restricted from sending or receiving any sexually explicit material in his personal life or for his own personal use.

Hall admitted that he failed to timely remove a video of one of the victims from his social media accounts, and that admission alone is enough to support the revocation. See Harris v. State, 2017 Ark. App. 452, 530 S.W.3d 872 (a defendant’s confession that he violated a condition of his suspended sentence is sufficient to support the revocation). Because proof of only one violation is sufficient to sustain a revocation, Mathis, supra, we need not address the remaining grounds for revocation.

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Next, Hall argues that conditions 13 and 14 are unconstitutional because “they invade [his] right to protected speech under the First Amendment,” which protects sexually explicit material. He also contends that conditions 13 and 14 are void for vagueness and thus violate the Fourteenth Amendment. However, we are affirming Hall’s revocation based on his failure to remove all photographs or videos of Jasmine Murray from his social media accounts within ten days of the court’s order, which is condition 11 of his SIS. Because conditions 13 and 14 are not implicated in the basis for revocation, we need not address Hall’s constitutional arguments. Our supreme court has held that it will not address a constitutional argument when the case can be disposed of without doing so. Feland v. State, 355 Ark. 573, 142 S.W.3d 631 (2004); see also Foreman v. State, 321 Ark. 167, 901 S.W.2d 802 (appellate court will not address appellant’s constitutional argument because its resolution is not so necessary to the determination of this case that it cannot otherwise be decided).

Affirmed; remanded to amend sentencing order.

BARRETT and BROWN, JJ., agree.

James Law Firm, by: William O. “Bill” James, Jr., and Drew Curtis, for appellant.

Tim Griffin, Att’y Gen., by: Joseph Karl Luebke, Ass’t Att’y Gen., for appellee.