Van Buren felon headed to prison for extended stay after negotiated plea deal on drugs and firearms

A Van Buren man should spend the better part of at least the next decade in prison after he took a plea deal and had two separate cases adjudicated last week in Sebastian County District Court.

Rex Ellis Jones, 39, picked up six drug and/or firearms related felony convictions in the plea deal and received a massive amount of imposed time as well as an unprecedented amount of suspended sentences in the court proceedings.

In one case, Ellis picked up twenty years with twenty suspended on a Possession of Firearms By Certain Persons and another fifteen years for Possession of Drug Paraphernalia. In the second case, the state gave him twenty years with sixty suspended for Simultaneous Possession of Drugs and Firearms and twenty years with twenty suspended on Possession of Methamphetamine and Possession of Firearms By Certain Persons violation.

He was also hit with a habitual offender tag in both cases which calls for an additional four years.

In total, Elis was sentenced to 95-plus years and 120 years suspended. Fortunately for him, the sentences were set to run concurrently but even in the best of circumstances, it will be well into the next decade before he is released.

Ellis has been hitting it hard in the criminal world since a 2001 conviction for Possession of Counterfeit Controlled Substances drew him a suspended imposition of sentence of sixty months.

Since that auspicious start, Ellis has been convicted for well over a dozen felonies and has been to jail more times than Otis Campbell on Mayberry Day weekend.

He has convictions for possession of drugs, paraphernalia and firearms, including simultaneously possessing all three. In addition there was a burglary, felony domestic abuse and terroristic threatening and a healthy dose of various misdemeanors along the way.