A 34-year-old Little Rock man who shot two brothers, killing one of them, was sentenced Friday to 46 years in prison after a Pulaski County jury learned the man had maimed a woman 14 years ago in a shooting that prosecutors described as "almost identical circumstances."
Stanley Isaac Nelson faced a maximum penalty of 100 years in prison. Because of his prior violent conviction, Nelson cannot qualify for early release.
Nelson did not dispute that he shot the men -- 34-year-old Sedrick Lemont Green and 31-year-old Latravis Jerome Morant -- during a birthday celebration for Green at the Jacksonville home of another Morant family member. Green was hit in an arm and leg while Latravis Morant, a father of five, died after being shot in the stomach.
Charged with first-degree murder and first-degree battery, Nelson contended he was protecting himself and his cousin, 34-year-old Courtney Ryan Marshall, who was losing a fight to Green. Prosecutors said Marshall was the aggressor in the fight and that Nelson could have broken up the altercation without using the gun.
The eight women and four men on the jury Friday convicted Nelson on the battery count but reduced the murder charge to second-degree after about six hours of deliberations over two days.
Jurors spent about three hours Friday considering a sentence before calling for 35 years for the murder charge and 11 years for battery.
Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen stacked the sentences, observing the similarities between the shootings.
The judge said Nelson's new sentence should also run consecutively with the 30-year sentence he received in 2002 for unlawful discharge of a firearm from a vehicle.
"The court believes running the sentences consecutively is not only warranted but consistent with the concept of justice," Griffen said.
Because Nelson used a gun when children were present, the defendant, who did not testify, faced up to 55 years on the murder count and 45 years on the battery charge.
At sentencing Friday, the victim of the December 2000 shooting told jurors she will never have full mobility in her right arm -- where she was wounded -- and still suffers occasional panic attacks.
"It's something that doesn't go away," Sabrina Manley LaFleur said.
LaFleur had been outside a downtown Little Rock nightclub where Nelson had just been ejected for underage drinking. He threatened to shoot up the club, then returned and fired four shots, one of them hitting LaFleur, a stranger, in her right elbow. The injury ravaged her arm.
"I could feel myself turning cold, falling asleep," she said.
She would have died from blood loss but a pre-med college student applied a tourniquet. Emergency surgery lasted eight hours, she said, but the resulting incision had to be left open for a week so the swelling in her arm could subside enough for doctors to close the wound. She also had bone surgery, a skin graft and needed counseling for depression.
Deputy prosecutor John Hout did not make a sentencing recommendation but reminded jurors that Nelson had been out of prison only about two years when he shot the two brothers.
Hout asked jurors to consider the similarity of Nelson's crimes. In both cases, Nelson had been asked to leave but instead got a gun and started shooting, he said. LaFleur almost bled to death, and Latravis Morant died of blood loss from a gunshot to the stomach, he said. Alcohol was involved both times, Hout told jurors.
Witnesses testifying on Nelson's behalf included his mother, Brenda Jackson, who told jurors that the Nelson in the courtroom was not the same man as the Nelson who shot LaFleur. Jackson said Nelson, her only child, had saved enough money in prison to start his own car lot and worked a second job as a machinist, all to to be an example for his own daughter.
"His only goal was trying to rehabilitate himself so he could show his daughter a better life," Jackson said. "He came back knowing prison life is not for him and he wanted to do better. He's not a monster."
Defense attorney David Cannon asked jurors to take into consideration how Nelson has turned his life around, calling the shooting of the two men a tragedy.
"He did something stupid and terrible as a kid. But he's become a productive member of society," Cannon said at sentencing. "This was a situation that got out of control and turned to tragedy."
Metro on 10/25/2014