The Arkansas Supreme Court has ordered a Little Rock lawyer to explain why she should not be sanctioned after she took a Hot Springs murder defendant’s appeal, won three extensions and then never filed a brief, leaving the case idle for seven months while her client sat in prison on a life sentence.
In a per curiam order issued Oct. 1, the court gave Angela D. Kendrick until 5 p.m. Oct. 15 to file a written response “explaining her conduct in this case, accounting for any funds received related to this case, and explaining why she should not receive sanctions.” The order says Kendrick “has, apparently, abandoned her client.”
Her client, James Anthony Barron Jr., 30, was convicted of first-degree murder by a Garland County jury on April 10, 2025, in the 2021 shooting death of 70-year-old Larry Wayne Natt Sr. at his Pleasant Valley Street home in Hot Springs. He was sentenced to life in prison plus a 15-year firearm enhancement, according to the sentencing order signed by Circuit Judge Ralph Ohm. The Sentinel-Record reported that prosecutors described the killing as a robbery and premeditated murder to get drugs and money Natt kept in his home.
Barron’s trial lawyers, Josh and Justin Hurst of Hot Springs, filed a timely notice of appeal in May 2025. The record was lodged with the Supreme Court on Aug. 4, 2025, with Barron’s brief due Sept. 13. The Hursts later told the court Barron had informed them he no longer wanted them on the case and would hire someone else.
The day before that deadline, Kendrick filed a motion saying Barron had “recently retained” her and asking to be substituted as his lawyer and for 60 more days to review the record. The court granted both requests Oct. 23 and set a new deadline of Nov. 12.
On Nov. 11 she asked for another 60 days, saying her “schedule has been such that she will need additional time.” The court granted it. On Jan. 10, the day before that deadline, she asked for 90 more days, saying her mother had been in intensive care at UAMS since Christmas and that she was at her mother’s bedside making medical decisions. The clerk’s office gave her 45 days, to Feb. 25, and marked it a final extension.
No brief was filed. Court records show nothing further from Kendrick on the docket after the January motion.
Barron wrote to the court from the East Arkansas Regional Unit in Marianna asking about his appeal. In a June 3 letter, the court’s criminal justice coordinator told him that Kendrick had been scheduled to file his brief on Feb. 25 “but no brief has been filed as of this date,” and that he would have to file a motion if he wanted a different lawyer.
On July 7, the attorney general’s office moved to dismiss the appeal outright, telling the court that Kendrick “has not filed a brief, has not filed a motion to do so belatedly, and has taken no other steps to prosecute this appeal.”
Three days later Barron filed a handwritten motion asking the court to remove Kendrick and appoint him a new lawyer, followed by a motion for appointed counsel and an affidavit saying he has no income, no money and no property.
The court granted Barron’s requests Sept. 10, appointed attorney Frank Arey to represent him and gave Arey until Oct. 20 to file the brief. On Oct. 1 it denied the state’s motion to dismiss and issued the show-cause order to Kendrick.
“It is well settled that under no circumstances may an attorney who has not been relieved by this court abandon an appeal,” the court wrote, citing cases going back to 1992 in which lawyers who failed to file briefs were held in contempt, fined and referred to the Committee on Professional Conduct.
Special Justice Cory Cox joined the order. Justice Barbara Webb did not participate.
Kendrick, who was licensed in 2009, was reprimanded by the Supreme Court’s Committee on Professional Conduct in November 2024 in a separate matter. According to the consent findings and order in that case, a client paid her $2,550 in June 2021 to reopen a custody case and she took no action for 17 months, then failed to return his file or his money after he fired her. The committee found she violated five professional conduct rules, including one covering “dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation,” for telling the client she had mailed his file when he never received it. He got a $2,500 refund in January 2024, shortly before the formal complaint was served.
Her filings in the Barron appeal list an office at 900 S. Shackleford Road in Little Rock. In August, the building’s landlord sued her in Pulaski County Circuit Court for $2,650 in unpaid rent, saying it took back the office at the end of June after she defaulted on the lease. That suit is pending.
Barron also has a second appeal pending in the Arkansas Court of Appeals from an unrelated Garland County theft and battery conviction in April 2026.
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