Carson City inmate gets more prison time for grand theft

Aaron Clack will spend at least three more years in prison following his sentence on grand theft charges Tuesday.

Clack, of Carson City, is serving between 18 months and five years for trafficking in the drug Ecstasy; that sentence was imposed in June 2011.

While in prison, he was charged with multiple counts of grand theft and, in a plea bargain, pleaded guilty to three of them involving the theft of a fancy motorcycle, a quad-runner, a forklift and two trailers.

Clack pleaded for leniency from District Judge James Wilson, saying he has reformed his life during the past two years behind bars, is sober and drug-free and intends to turn his life around. He and his lawyer, Ben Walker, asked Wilson to make all the new sentences concurrent to the existing term and backdate their start to a year ago, when Clack first appeared on the theft charges. That would effectively make him eligible for parole later this year.

Walker said that if those charges had been in place when Black was sentenced on the drug charge, all could have been handled in a single plea bargain that likely would have allowed him access to parole by now. He pointed out that Clack will finish serving the drug sentence in September.

“He was engaged in essentially a one-man crime spree,” said prosecutor Melanie Porter.

She said Clack has a long history of criminal conduct and legal problems dating back more than a decade, to when he was a teenager. She said there is no evidence Clack is a “changed man,” as he claims.

“What you see before you is a man with absolutely no remorse,” Porter said.

She argued that the new charges should be consecutive.

Wilson praised the progress Clack has made in redefining his life and his clean record in prison. But he made it clear he doesn’t believe Clack should have access to parole yet. For the first of the three theft counts, Wilson ordered 18 to 45 months in prison to be served concurrently with the remainder of drug charge.

But Wilson ordered one- to- five-year sentences for each of the other two theft counts and ordered that the second not start until after completion of the first theft sentence, and the third sentence start after completion of the second.

That will add at least three years to the time Clack must serve.

In addition, he was ordered to pay $24,000 in restitution.