Female sex offender sentenced to nine years in prison

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A woman convicted last year of helping a Tennessee runaway come to Texarkana, Ark., to work as a prostitute was sentenced to nine years in prison Tuesday.

Ashley Elizabeth Hatfield, 29, was sentenced in Miller County to a six-year term of probation in April 2016 for transporting a minor across state lines for prohibited sexual contact, a conviction which requires sex offender registration. Since then, Hatfield has been arrested twice for failing to register as a sex offender.

Hatfield was sentenced to five years probation in January for failing to register as a sex offender and was re-arrested for repeating the same offense just a few months later. Probation officials filed motions to revoke Hatfield’s probations for transporting a minor and for failing to comply with sex offender registration requirements as well.

Hatfield pleaded guilty to failing to register as a sex offender at a hearing Tuesday before Miller County Circuit Judge Kirk Johnson. She also admitted to violating the conditions of her six-year probation for transporting a minor for prohibited sexual contact and her five-year probation for an earlier charge of failing to register as a sex offender.

As part of a plea arrangement negotiated between Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Connie Mitchell and Hatfield’s defense attorney, John Pickett of Texarkana, Hatfield was sentenced to six years in prison for transporting a minor across state lines for prohibited sexual contact. For each of the two charges of failing to register as a sex offender, Johnson sentenced Hatfield to three-year prison terms. Johnson ordered that the three year sentences will run at the same time but consecutive to the six-year term so that Hatfield’s prison sentence totals nine years.

Hatfield was arrested by members of the Texarkana, Ark., Police Department in August 2015 after they received information from investigators in Tennessee who were looking for a teen girl who had run away from home. a probable cause affidavit states. Investigators determined Hatfield had helped the girl leave her home to come to Texarkana to work as a prostitute. Both the teen and Hatfield were advertising prostitution services in Texarkana on backpage.com. TAPD officers arrested Hatfield after finding her and the teen runaway at a local Texarkana, Ark., motel.

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