A 33-year-old Newport man has accepted a 40-year prison sentence for sexually assaulting two Jacksonville boys who said the defendant's attacks were based on how well they played the board game Monopoly.

Sentencing papers filed on Monday show Cordell Orlando Wyatt pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree sexual assault, reduced from rape, in exchange for the 40-year sentence imposed by Circuit Judge Melanie Martin.

As a repeat offender with at least four felony convictions, he faced 30 to 60 years on the charges. Wyatt has eight prior convictions in Craighead and Jackson counties, including being a felon in possession of a firearm, commercial burglary, residential burglary and theft. Wyatt was arrested in October 2020 and has been in custody ever since.

Under the terms of his plea agreement, negotiated by deputy prosecutor Jordan Snowden and public defender Jessica Escalante, Wyatt will serve a 15-year suspended sentence once he's released from prison.

According to court files, Wyatt had been a guest in the home of the children, who are brothers, for about two weeks sometime in October 2015 or November 2015 when the boys were about 6 and 8.

The older boy told authorities in August 2019 that Wyatt would make them play the game with him and that whichever brother finished last, Wyatt would sodomize.

He said the second-place finisher would not be molested. The boy said Wyatt always won while he usually lost. The boy said Wyatt would beat them if they didn't want to play the game. He said he never saw what Wyatt would do to his brother.

The younger boy said that he saw Wyatt molest his brother, describing seeing his older sibling on one occasion crying with Wyatt on top of him. Neither were dressed.

The boy said Wyatt had sexually assaulted him the same way he had done his brother, stating that one time he had tried to call his mother who was at work but that Wyatt had taken the phone away from him.

He said he never told their mother because Wyatt had shown him a gun and said he would shoot everyone he loved. He said he had seen Wyatt with a gun and the man had once fired the weapon.