Demontrey Herron v. State of Arkansas

── Demontrey Herron v. State of Arkansas ── Court: Court of Appeals of Arkansas Date: May 06, 2026 Category: General Cite as 2026 Ark. App. 276 ARKANSAS COURT OF APPEALS DIVISION I No. CR-25-677 DEMONTREY HERRON Opinion Delivered May 6, 2026 APPELLANT APPEAL FROM THE OUACHITA COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT V. [NO. 52CR-23-321] STATE OF ARKANSAS HONORABLE JOHN THOMAS APPELLEE SHEPHERD, JUDGE AFFIRMED ROBERT J. GLADWIN, Judge Appellant Demontrey Herron appeals from his July 23, 2025 conviction by an Ouachita County jury for aggravated robbery for which he was sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonment. His sole argument on appeal is that the circuit court erred in denying his motion for directed verdict because the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction. We affirm. I. Facts and Procedural History On October 30, 2023, Faye Hopson was working at Express Liquor in Camden, Arkansas, where she had been employed for seventeen years. At 10:07 a.m., a man walked into the store with a t-shirt wrapped around his head, pointed a gun at Hopson, and demanded that she give him all the money. After taking the cash out of one register, he asked her about the other register. She told him that the remainder of the money was in the back. With the gun pointed at Hopson, the robber took her to the back room, grabbed the cash drawer, and ordered her to the ground. She complied, and the robber ran out the front door with the cash drawer in hand. Hopson immediately called 911. Officer Todd Joffrion of the Camden Police Department (“Camden PD”) arrived within two minutes of her call. Hopson met him at the door, relayed the events that had occurred, and described the robber as a black male wearing dark clothing with something wrapped around his face—his eyes, nose, and top lip exposed. In a field behind the store, officers found cash strewn around. Some of it was clipped together and sorted by denomination like the cash in the liquor store. Found in the same field was a t-shirt with the words “Camden Housing Authority” on it. Although it had been raining the previous night and the morning of the robbery, the t-shirt had dry spots on it, indicating that it had not been in the field very long. During their review of surveillance footage from the seventeen cameras in and around the liquor store, officers saw that the visible part of the t-shirt the robber was wearing had “Camden” written on it in the same lettering as the one found outside the liquor store. The Camden PD posted images of the robber on social media in an attempt to identify him. Jonathan Cooper saw the image online and recognized the person as Herron, who was his brother’s friend. Although Cooper was employed by the Camden PD at the time, he had not been told that Herron was a suspect, been provided with the image before seeing it on social media, or been made aware that a robbery had occurred. After recognizing Herron on social media, Cooper visited Herron’s mother, Sonya White, who at the time 2 lived at a complex run by the Camden Housing Authority. He showed her the image the police had posted on social media. On November 1, Herron was arrested and charged with aggravated robbery in violation of Arkansas Code Annotated section 5-12-102 (Repl. 2013), a Class Y felony, and theft of property (less than $1,000) in violation of Arkansas Code Annotated section 5-36- 103 (Supp. 2023), a Class A misdemeanor. The next day, the police collected a buccal swab from him. The DNA from Herron’s buccal swab matched the DNA