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Bryan D. Donaldson mug shots taken less than six hours apart on Feb. 17, 2024 (Crittenden County Sheriff’s Office)
An attorney in Arkansas is facing legal difficulties after he was arrested for allegedly driving a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol last week — two times in the same evening. Bryan D. Donaldson was taken into custody twice on Friday and charged each time with one count of driving while intoxicated and one count of refusal to submit to a chemical test, records reviewed by Law&Crime show.
Donaldson, a former defense attorney, had his law license suspended in 2021 when he was arrested and charged in connection with a human trafficking case, which is still pending in federal court.
According to a report from WMC, the NBC affiliate in Memphis, Tennessee — some eight miles east of West Memphis, Arkansas, where Donaldson was arrested — he was first pulled over by deputies with the Crittenden County Sheriff’s Office at about 4:07 p.m. on Saturday. He was booked into the Crittenden County Jail for DUI and refusing to submit to a blood alcohol content test. He was released less than two hours later, at about 5:42 p.m., the report states.
However, it didn’t even take six hours before Donaldson was back in custody. At about 9:59 p.m. that same Saturday, Donaldson was booked into Crittenden County Jail for the second time on the exact same charges. He was released Sunday morning at about 3 a.m., per the report.
While the suspended attorney’s double-DUI charges are certainly serious, they are not nearly as consequential as the federal charges he is currently facing.
Donaldson in October 2021 was charged in the Eastern District of Arkansas with two counts of sex trafficking and one count of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking, all of which are felonies, court documents show.
In the indictment, prosecutors alleged that Donaldson knowingly used interstate commerce to “to recruit, entice, harbor, transport, provide, obtain, advertise, maintain, patronize, and solicit” a girl he knew was a minor for sexual intercourse. Furthermore, it is alleged that he knew and disregarded the fact that the minor was being forced to engage in the commercial sex act by “means of force, threats of force, fraud, coercion and any combination of such.”
U.S. District Court Judge Brian S. Miller in December denied a request from Donaldson to dismiss the charges against him in the federal criminal case. That trial is currently scheduled to begin on May 6, 2024.
