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When Dezarae Manson asked a Marion County judge for a court-appointed attorney in July, she explained why in a single handwritten line.
She had legal counsel, she wrote, and the Mansons were paying him. Now that she had left, she had no money to afford anything.
That sentence sits near the bottom of a routine two-page affidavit of indigency, the form Arkansas defendants fill out to ask the state for a lawyer. It is the first time the public record has shown who was paying for the attorney who represented all three defendants charged in connection with the March rape of an 18-year-old woman at a Yellville home.
It is also the clearest picture yet of what leaving the Manson family cost her.
Manson, 20, is charged in Marion County Circuit Court with rape, a Class Y felony punishable by 10 to 40 years or life, along with sexual assault in the second degree and coercion. Her case is 45CR-26-13. Circuit Judge Andrew S. Bailey presides.
On the affidavit, sworn July 21, she listed no employer and no income. Cash, savings, checking, stocks, real estate and vehicles were each entered as zero. Under liabilities she wrote none.
Asked whether anyone else lived in her home, she answered that she does not have a home right now.
She listed two children, one about a year old and one about 8 months. The form asks whether the children live in the home. She marked no. The Observer is not naming them.
The Observer has previously reported that court filings and sources describe Manson as the stepdaughter and girlfriend of Steven M. Manson Jr., and as someone groomed since she was 15. Her mother, Amber Manson, is married to Manson Jr. Steven L. Manson Sr. is her step-grandfather.
All three were charged separately in connection with the same March 7 report to the Marion County Sheriff’s Office. All three were represented by the same attorney, Little Rock lawyer Eugene P. Clifford.
That arrangement collapsed in late July.
On July 24, three days after Manson swore out her affidavit, Clifford moved to withdraw from all of the Manson cases. He cited Rule 1.7 of the Arkansas Rules of Professional Conduct, which bars a lawyer from representing clients whose interests conflict.
At an Aug. 18 status hearing in Yellville, it came out in open court that the conflict arose because Manson is now working against her co-defendants.
The paperwork tells the same story in a quieter way. On July 28, four days after Clifford’s motion, the prosecuting attorney’s office delivered the state’s case file to the Public Defender’s Office, according to a notice filed under Rule 17.2 of the Arkansas Rules of Criminal Procedure.
That file was thin. It consisted of the two-page information, a three-page affidavit, a criminal cover sheet, an issued warrant, a served warrant and a bail bond. An interview video is available only by appointment at the prosecutor’s office.
The court approved Manson’s request for a public defender on Aug. 3. Bailey formally relieved Clifford the next day.
Deputy Public Defender Steven Grady, who works out of the office on East Fifth Street in Mountain Home, filed his first three motions in the case on Aug. 12. They ask the state to preserve any recordings, to disclose any evidence of other crimes it plans to use at trial, and to turn over discovery.
None of the three suggests a defendant preparing to plead.
The 21-page discovery motion asks the state to identify anyone given legal or informal immunity in exchange for information. It asks for any promise of leniency, protection from prosecution or other inducement offered to a witness. Those are the questions a defense lawyer asks when preparing to challenge the state’s case, not join it.
No plea agreement, immunity deal or reduction of charges appears anywhere in the records the Observer reviewed. As of the last filing, Manson remains charged with rape.
Court records list her as released on bond.
The documents also show the gap between what the three defendants can now afford.
Manson Jr. and Manson Sr. hired Little Rock attorney Jack Lofton after Clifford withdrew. In August, Lofton filed a 34-paragraph discovery demand on Manson Jr.’s behalf. It asked whether police had used artificial intelligence to draft or analyze any report, whether investigators had deployed cell-site simulators, and whether the state planned to run background checks on prospective jurors.
Grady’s filings for Dezarae Manson are office forms. They carry template typos and refer to her with male pronouns throughout. One paragraph asks for the plan behind any roadblock or checkpoint, a scenario with no apparent connection to her case.
That is not a knock on the lawyer. It is what an indigent defense office produces when it is handed a Class Y felony and a defendant with nothing.
Arkansas still charges for the service. A separate form filed the same week assessed Manson a $400 public defender user fee under a 1999 state law. The law directs that the money be collected at the beginning of the proceeding, and it allows the state to intercept tax refunds, legal settlements and lottery winnings to satisfy the debt.
She reported having none of those things.
The records reviewed by the Observer do not show a trial date for Manson. Manson Jr. is scheduled for a status hearing Nov. 10, a pretrial hearing Jan. 12 and a jury trial Feb. 10 across his six pending cases. Manson Sr. has a status hearing set for Oct. 13.
Bailey said in August that he intends to keep the cases on the same schedule and let the state decide the order of trials.
