Murder of real estate agent raises many questions
By Roy Ockert Jr.
Oct. 5, 2014
The shocking murder of North Little Rock real estate agent Beverly Carter has raised many questions about how such a tragedy could happen and what we can do to prevent similar ones.
Accused in the murder, Arron Lewis, 33, told reporters while being taken to jail that he targeted Carter because “she was just a woman that worked alone — a rich broker.”
It’s impossible to explain the reasoning of a psychopath, which Lewis must be to commit such a senseless act. If he was after money, robbing a bank or other business is a more logical than robbing an individual, who might not have even been carrying much cash.
The murder, though, has real estate agents and brokers all over Arkansas re-examining their practices. While some agencies routinely take precautions, others leave their agents vulnerable to predators like Lewis. And the agents are, after all, independent contractors who set their own rules. Meeting an unknown client at an empty house in an isolated area is a common practice.
Miki Bass, chief executive officer of the Arkansas Realtors Association, told a Little Rock television reporter she will push for a better standard. “You need to meet your realtor in their office, give them a copy of your driver’s license before going out with your realtor,” she said. “That way it’s safety for them, safety for you. It’s just a good business practice we need to all start.”
If Lewis had been required to produce a driver’s license at Carter’s office before making the appointment, that might not have saved her life, though. It could have led police to him quicker, but driver’s licenses can be forged, and even a valid license wouldn’t have revealed him as a convicted felon.
Requiring an identification is a good idea that would work better if agents made showings in teams. Unfortunately, even a Sunday open house in a rural setting can be dangerous if a predator targets an agent.
All law-abiding people could better protect themselves if there were an easily accessible national database of convicted felons. That way a business owner who is considering a job applicant, showing a house or making a loan could use a driver’s license to make a thorough check. Knowing about felony convictions is critical in such cases.
Isn’t that an invasion of privacy? No more so than providing salary requirements, income levels and credit history. Submitting such information in an application is voluntary, and a clean criminal record is just as important.
Arkansas can’t establish such a database on its own; it must be part of a national database. We already have the makings of such a database in the National Crime Information Center, but it’s only available to law enforcement and criminal justice agencies.
However, we’ve made great progress in Arkansas and nationally in registering convicted sex offenders, and generally information about their background and whereabouts is available online. If such a database is valuable to protect us from sex offenders, why isn’t the same thing true as to other felons, especially those who have been convicted of violent crimes?
Being able to run such a check would not be foolproof. A database is only as good as the people who input information, and the efficiency of sex offender registries varies widely from state to state. Some records are expunged by court order and might not be available. Further, a predator may be able to falsify his background or may not have a criminal history.
Others contend that Lewis should not have been free to commit this murder, and indeed he was paroled by the Arkansas Department of Correction in August 2013 after serving less than two years of a 6-year sentence on two theft convictions.
“I believe that most people in Arkansas given an opportunity to vote would say that criminals should serve every day, every hour and every minute of the time that they’ve been sentenced to serve for a crime,” state Sen. Jason Rapert, R-Conway, told the Arkansas Times.
He’s probably right, and if Lewis had not been paroled, Beverly Carter would no doubt still be alive. And his criminal history would seem to have made him a likely candidate to serve more time. But that would not have stopped him from killing someone else after serving his full sentence.
Keep in mind, too, that Lewis’ extensive criminal history included only one charge that might have been considered a violent crime.
We can get tougher on criminals, but we must pay the price. Arkansas prisons are full now, even with a parole system, and last year’s crackdown on probation violators filled almost all county jails to capacity or near capacity because of the lack of prison space.
Meanwhile, Sen. Rapert and his legislative colleagues have been more concerned with cutting taxes to further their own political careers than fully funding public education, higher education and the correction system. A tax cut plan that was not supposed to exceed $100 million now is projected to be at least $140 million next year, and yet the two main candidates for governor are trying to outdo each other with talk of further tax cuts.
What they don’t tell you is where they’ll cut expenses.
A couple of legislators are already trying to figure a way around building another state prison. They want to farm them out to privately run prisons in Louisiana, which might not be a bad idea. At least that might be more practical than Rapert’s suggestion of turning empty school buildings into prisons. But those private prisons won’t take the worst of our inmates, and there are hidden costs, such as medical care.
Patchwork solutions are not solutions.
Roy Ockert is editor emeritus of The Jonesboro Sun. He may be reached by e-mail at royo@suddenlink.net.