Manning was arrested and charged with the offenses after four police officers executed a search warrant at 216 East Word, in Jonesboro. When they entered the home, two men were seated in the living room, and four men, including Manning, were in the kitchen. The police searched the house and found two guns wrapped in a black ski mask on the top shelf of the closet in the only bedroom. While in the bedroom, the police also found seventeen grams of rock cocaine in the pocket of a jacket hung in the closet, and about three grams of cocaine powder in the pocket of a pair of jeans in a dresser drawer. The police found drug paraphernalia in the kitchen.
All parties concede that the house is very small.
After determining that Manning lived in the house by himself, the trial court convicted him. Ark. Code Ann. A person found guilty of this offense may be sentenced to prison for a term of ten to forty years, or life. The State argued that the accessibility of the guns should not turn on their proximity to the appellant at the moment of the officers' entry into the residence. The trial court agreed, stating that it should not make a difference in a defendant's guilt or innocence that he was in the room with the firearm or in another room.