A 20-year-old Jacksonville man Thursday pleaded guilty to the fatal ambush of an ATM customer in exchange for a 50-year prison sentence.
Lerome Deshawn Kelley, flanked by defense attorneys Kent Krause and Amy Douglas, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, reduced from capital murder, and aggravated robbery for the slaying of 23-year-old Marcus Anthony Israel of Jacksonville about two weeks before Christmas in 2013.
In exchange for the plea, prosecutors dropped three other aggravated robbery charges over allegations that Kelley had held up three other men in Jacksonville, with two of those robberies in November 2013 at other ATMs while the third was at the Sonic restaurant on West Main Street the same day as the killing.
Senior deputy prosecutor Melanie Martin recommended the 50-year sentence imposed by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Barry Sims. Jailed since his arrest two days after Israel was killed, Kelley will have to serve 35 years in prison before he will qualify for parole. Martin told the judge that prosecutors had consulted with Israel's father about the plea agreement.
She told the judge that Israel was ambushed when he drove up to use the ATM outside the Jacksonville First Arkansas Bank & Trust on West Main Street. Israel hit the gas when the robber approached him on the passenger side of his green Dodge Ram pickup, but the man fired through the truck window, Martin told the judge, citing bank surveillance video.
Israel crashed into a neighboring vacant building, the prosecutor said. He had been shot through the right temple and also suffered a wrist gunshot wound, possibly from trying to shield himself from gunfire, she said. Kelley is shown on the bank video bicycling away from the scene, Martin told the judge.
She said he admitted to the murder and the other robberies. According to court files, Kelley told police he "got scared" and started shooting when Israel tried to get away.
In a letter to the judge in February, Kelley denied killing Israel, saying he confessed only because he's never been in "that situation before and I panicked." Someone else was the killer, Kelley wrote, and that gunpowder police found on his hand was because he'd handled a friend's pistol the day before he was arrested.
In the handwritten two-page missive, Kelley said he hoped the judge would believe that he wrongly confessed, writing that he had dreamed of a future of marriage, family and military service.
"Please find it in your heart to believe. I am a very good young man. I graduated from high school with a diploma, went to college at Arkansas Baptist College," Kelley wrote. "I learn that this [jail] is not a place for me or any young man. All I'm hoping to do in [life] is work a normal job until I get a house to start a family with my girlfriend then sign up for the Air Force and follow my granddad's footsteps."
Metro on 01/24/2015