LITTLE ROCK — Shuffling to the courtroom door in a line of offenders with his hands and feet shackled, 17-year-old Leo Belcher leaned over to talk to a boy sitting on a bench lining the hallway’s opposite wall.
“Stay out of trouble,” Belcher told the boy with a smile, a few minutes before pleading guilty to first-degree murder in the shooting of aman in September.
Belcher, who was 16 at the time of the shooting, was sentenced to 33 years in prison as part of a plea agreement in the death of 20-year-old Antonio Patterson on Sept. 17 at the Silver City Courts apartment complex on West 18th Street in North Little Rock. Belcher will not be eligible for parole until he is 40.
When asked by Circuit Judge Marion Humphrey whyhe shot Patterson, Belcher said: “I needed some money.”
In September 2008, Belcher was convicted of sexual assault and was sentenced to the Youth Services Division. Two weeks before the Patterson shooting, he ran away from a caseworker for Consolidated Youth Services, which contracts with the state Youth Services Division, when the caseworker stoppedto get gas at a convenience store on Broadway.
According to a North Little Rock police report, Belcher met Patterson at the apartment complex Sept. 17 to sell him the gun that was used in the shooting. The two talked awhile, but the evening ended with Patterson shot in the face, dead. Belcher was charged four days later in the killing.
After the shooting, hehid for several months before surrendering to North Little Rock police in January. When Humphrey asked why he shot Patterson, Belcher said he needed the money to survive, since he was unable to get a job while he was “on the run.”
“You don’t have to survive that way,” Humphrey responded.
Lavern Patterson, the fa-ther of the victim, addressed the court before the sentencing was handed down. He held a tissue in his right hand and occasionally dabbed his eyes as he spoke.
“It’s been very hard to lose a loved one to an act of violence,” Patterson said through tears. “It’s been so hard.”
After Patterson sat back down, Belcher turned and apologized to other members of the victim’s family, who rejected the apology and yelled back him. Humphrey announced the sentence as other offenders sitting to Belcher’s right looked on and the room fell quiet.
The judge continued to talk to Belcher as Belcher was escorted out by bailiffs.
“There’s no excuse for this,” Humphrey said. “I don’t care what your background is.”
Pulaski County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Leigh Patterson, who is no relation to the victim’s family, said Belcher will have to serve atleast 70 percent of his sentence before he is eligible for parole, making him at least 40 years old before his release from prison. She said the plea was a way to grant some sense of finality to the family in the case.
Though, “no number of years that we give can bring a family member back,” she said.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 07/24/2010