By JOAN McCOY
Leader staff writer
Two Laotian women living in Cabot’s Greystone who were convicted in October 2010 of prostitution have filed a federal lawsuit against Lonoke County, the county sheriff, two deputies and the Cabot couple who owned their home.
The women, along with the man who was cleared in court of using their services, allege that their arrests were illegal and motivated by racial and religious prejudice.
They are asking for punitive damages of a non-specified amount. They want the landlords to give back their $5,000 deposit on the house and they want the sheriff to return the $7,100 his deputies took from their home and bank accounts.
Lonoke County Pro-secutor Chuck Graham, who inherited the prostitution case from Prosecutor Will Feland, said this week that he hasn’t been served and can’t speak about any of the specifics because he hasn’t seen a copy of the lawsuit. However, one thing is sure: He can’t give back the money seized during the arrest because the women have appealed their conviction to circuit court.
“It’s still evidence and we might need it in court,” Graham said.
Reggie Koch, the Little Rock lawyer representing Jerry Richard, A.E. Sayasavnh Samontry and Pornpiemon Phouangmany, said in the suit filed July 7 that disdain by their white, Christian neighbors for the Laotian culture that was evident at Samaontry’s home (shared by her husband and Phouangmany, her sister) led to a racially and politically motivated investigation into the activities there and the illegal arrests that followed.
In October, Cabot District Judge Joe O’Bryan listened to about six hours of testimony put on by the prosecution before finding the women guilty of running a house of prostitution under the guise of a massage business at 105 Ridgecrest Square, which would have also been illegal since they didn’t have a city permit to run a business in their home
The women were each fined $590 and given 30-day suspended jail sentences, provided there are no more offenses. All the charges were misdemeanors. They have since moved to Texas and no date has been set for their appeal to circuit court.
Since the sheriff’s department made the arrest inside city limits, the county was responsible for prosecuting. John Huggins, the deputy who prosecuted the case, said after the judge’s ruling that he was satisfied despite the not-guilty verdict for Richard.
“From our perspective, that prostitution house that we believe was operating for a long time has been shut down. That’s what we’re happy about,” Huggins said.
Cabot Police Chief Jackie Davis and then-Mayor Eddie Joe Williams expressed displeasure, when the three were arrested, over the sheriff coming inside city limits.
Technically, the sheriff has jurisdiction over the entire county, but as a matter of courtesy, cities usually take care of all the territory inside their incorporated limits and the sheriff takes care of the unincorporated areas. Davis said then that he had heard complaints about the house, but that his department takes more time building a case.
Richard had been divorced from Samontry for two and a half years and she was remarried to a Laotian at the time she was convicted of prostitution. Richard said then that the case should have been dismissed for lack of evidence.
“I’ve known her for 12 years and obviously we have a lot of fun together,” he told The Leader as the left the courtroom in 2010.
The evidence against the women included a black book with names of men believed to be customers, a sheet of paper containing prices, pictures of scantily clad women taken from a computer that were identical to those on an internet site advertising adult entertainment and a packing slip for 1,000 condoms.
Detectives who entered the house after watching traffic for about two days said during the trial in district court that Samontry was naked except for a towel. Richard was lying naked except for a towel across his genitals on a cot spread with white towels.
Kevin and Bonnie Blakely —who along with the sheriff, and deputies Jim Kulesa and Keenan Carter are named in the federal lawsuit—lived next door to the house they rented to Jimmy and AE Samontry for $1,300 a month.
Bonnie Blakely testified in district court that men driving expensive cars came and went most days until about 10 p.m.
“I’d sit on the back porch and just watch,” Blakely said during the October trial.
Men would drive by slowly as if looking for a particular house, she said. Then the garage door would open; they would drive in and the door would close behind them; they would stay about an hour and leave.
“It looked like prostitution going on,” she said.
Blakely said she recalled that she called Cabot police in the summer of 2009 after she had been watching the house for several months. The Cabot police took no action, she said, so she called the sheriff’s department in May 2010.
At one point, the Samontrys rented a house across the street and apparently worked from it for three months until they were evicted, Blakely said.
They didn’t appear to live in it, she said, because she would see several Asian women walking across the street to her rental house at about 10 p.m.
Koch says in the complaint filed in federal court that the sheriff had no authority to arrest Richard on the misdemeanor charge of patronizing a prostitute because the alleged offense was not committed in the presence of a law-enforcement officer and the deputies did not have a warrant for his arrest.
By Arkansas law, the arrests are considered false imprisonment, the complaint said.
