A circuit court decision to order a 17-year-old Sevier County girl to stand trial as an adult was found to be lacking in evidence and contradictory, and an Arkansas Court of Appeals majority concluded “a mistake has been committed.” That conclusion, overturning the decision, was reached in a 34-page holding that marks the first time a state appeals court has reversed this type of lower-court decision in this manner in 25 years.

“(It) does not appear that the circuit court’s written findings are accurate and consistent with the evidence, and these inconsistencies are certainly material to the reversal of the (circuit court) order. On several occasions, the circuit court did not provide any detail or facts to support its conclusions,” appeals court Judge Mike Murphy wrote in the ruling, a 4-2 holding. “(The) circuit court’s order fails when applied against the entire evidence.”

The girl, Lillian Houselog of Lockesburg, is charged as an adult with abuse of a corpse over accusations that she and her adult boyfriend, who is also charged, hid the corpse of their infant son in the trash following his premature birth and death, two days after she had taken abortion medication. The Class D felony carries up to six years in prison. Houselog, who is free on bail, had never been in trouble with the law previously. “After a thorough review of the entire evidence, we have a definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed,” wrote Murphy, who was joined by fellow Judges Bart Virden, Robert Gladwin and Kenneth Hixon.

“Indeed, if we fail to reverse the circuit court on the basis of this record, we will have ceded meaningful judicial review of juvenile transfers to what would be, in effect, the absolute discretion of the prosecuting attorneys and the circuit courts.”

Dissenting from the June 5 holding were appeals court Judge Mark Klappenbach and Chief Judge Brandon Harrison, who stated they would uphold the lower court decision to try Houselog as an adult, with Harrison writing that the majority members were supplanting their judgment over the trial court’s.

Authorities can ask the state Supreme Court to overrule the appeals court holding. What prosecutors will do next is not known.

The decision to try the girl as an adult was made by Erin Hunter, the prosecuting attorney for the 9th-West Judicial District of Howard, Little River, Pike and Sevier counties. She could not be reached for comment Friday because her phone’s voicemail box was full. On appeal, prosecutors were represented by Darnisa Johnson with the attorney general’s office.

An attorney representing Houselog, Jacob Worlow, a visiting professor and director of the University of Arkansas law school’s Criminal Law Clinic in Fayetteville, did not return an email seeking comment.

During the nine months of the appeal process, which included oral arguments in Little Rock on May 15, Houselog’s case drew national attention and her cause was championed by the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, New York-based Human Rights Watch and the National Center for Youth Law from Oakland, Calif. The groups banded together to submit written arguments to support Houselog.

After examining the evidence made available to the circuit judge, reviewing the arguments he heard as well as accepting further appeal arguments, the majority of the higher court found the evidence showed Houselog, now 18, to have been a child.

“Simply put, the entire evidence reveals that (Houselog) was an immature, isolated, dependent, abused teenager prone to fits of jealousy, anger, and petty disputes. At the same time, following a painful birth without labor and delivery medications and suffering postpartum bleeding, she tried to resuscitate her baby and managed to clamp the umbilical cord as she suctioned fluid to help the baby breathe,” the ruling states. “She expressed great anguish, regret, and pain in her texts. (Houselog) was a young, unsophisticated, scared child caught in a situation that her maturity level was ill-equipped to handle.”

The appeals court judges noted no circuit court’s juvenile-transfer finding has been set aside like this since 1999.

“There was no evidence introduced that the crime was violent or that granting her transfer would pose a threat to society. There was no evidence presented that she planned, premeditated, or willfully committed the alleged crime,” the appeals holding states. “There was no evidence that she is a violent person. She is merely a young girl who, without any support, had just given birth in a trailer.

Two months after turning 17, Houselog gave birth prematurely on Nov. 6, 2022, with the infant dying “despite (her) efforts to save him,” the holding states.

Houselog told the friend via text messages she had taken the Plan C abortion pill two days earlier and, having felt sick that entire time, gave birth to the baby. The child was born alive and further along than she expected but died after about 10 minutes, although she tried to save him, Houselog told the friend.

According to the friend’s testimony, Houselog said she wrapped the body in a T-shirt, gave the remains to her boyfriend and “asked him to do the rest,” but put the body someplace where dogs could not get him. The friend said Houselog told her she did not know and did not want to know what he did with the body but said Houselog saw him taking plastic bags with him. Houselog told her she wished they had given the infant a burial.

The friend alerted sheriff ’s deputies who found Houselog the next day at her home with blood running down the back of her pants, and took her into custody. Still wearing her bloody clothes, the girl told investigators she had a miscarriage but invoked her right to an attorney and cut the interview short.

On Nov. 8, after questioning her then-22-year-old boyfriend, Matthew Hallmark of Lockesburg, deputies found the baby’s body wrapped in a plastic bag in a large garbage bin at the trailer park where the couple lived.

The prosecution decision to try Houselog as an adult, which had been suggested by Sevier County Circuit Judge Bryan Chesshir, Hunter’s predecessor as prosecuting attorney, was subsequently challenged by her lawyers. Chesshir also conducted the legally mandated hearing April 27, 2023, and upheld the decision to prosecute her as an adult.

When deciding whether a child should stand trial as an adult, the law requires circuit judges to make a series of written findings about the maturity, education and lifestyle of the accused.

Those findings include a determination on the nature of the criminal charges, a consideration of any violence involved, and the role attributed to the child, with the circuit judge also mandated to determine what, if anything, could be done to rehabilitate the child.

The purpose is for the judge to establish the child’s potential for rehabilitation by age 21 then determining what would better serve society, prosecution in adult court or allowing the child to go through the redemptive services available in the juvenile justice system.

In his May 5, 2023 ruling, Chesshir’s findings included the determination the offense was violently premeditated, and “requires the protection of society through the prosecution in the criminal division of the circuit court.”

In the 18 pages devoted to reviewing Chesshir’s findings, the appeals court described three times how his decision failed to meet the court standards required to show how he came to his conclusions. The high court further noted nine times that Chesshir’s conclusions were inconsistent with the evidence, describing some of his findings as being contradictory to the proof that was before him. Thirteen times, the appeals court describes Chesshir as reaching conclusions that have “no evidence” to support them.

The appeals judges took issue with Chesshir’s determination that the seriousness of the offense requires Houselog be tried as an adult for “the protection of society,” despite him receiving “no evidence … as to the potential threat to society if the case was transferred to juvenile court.”

“What, exactly, is the danger that Lillian poses to society and how does trying her as an adult further the goal of ‘the protection of society’ any more effectively than seeking her rehabilitation in the juvenile division?” the appeals court wrote. “Here, the written order fails to include details and facts to support the circuit court’s conclusions.”

Further, the appeals court held, Chesshir found the “offense was committed in a violent, premeditated and willful manner” with “no evidence” before him to reach that conclusion.

The prosecution’s argument that Chesshir’s finding on the manner of the crime is supported by Houselog taking abortion pills to terminate her pregnancy did not persuade the appeals court Houselog acted in such a manner.

“Evidence of planning to terminate a pregnancy is not evidence of planning to abuse a corpse. Whether a person medically induces an abortion is irrelevant to charges outside of that action,” the appeals holding states, noting that the Legislature has “specifically forbidden” that a mother be criminally charged for the death of an unborn child as a result of taking abortion medication.

“There was no evidence at the hearing to support the circuit court’s finding that the offense was committed in a violent, premeditated, or willful manner,” the high court stated. “This finding is not merely inconsistent with, but is wholly unsupported by, the evidence.”

Chesshir could not have known what caused the baby to die because there was nothing presented to him about any autopsy or toxicology reports describing what medication Houselog took or whether that medication was found in her system or the baby’s remains, the appeals court pointed out.

The appeals court further stated that while Chesshir determined Houselog played a significant role in the crime, he had been presented with little proof to support that finding.

“(There) was no evidence presented that the events that took place after the baby had passed away were premeditated or willful, there is also no evidence that the events were planned. Far from planning the disposal of a corpse, Lillian was trying to save her baby’s life,” the appeals court held. “There is no evidence in the record from which a fact-finder could conclude that Matthew and Lillian planned what to do with the corpse. (The) written order provides no details or facts to support the court’s conclusions. Once again, the order fails the tests.”

When deciding whether a child should stand trial as an adult, the law requires circuit judges to make a series of written findings about the maturity, education and lifestyle of the accused.