The 19-year-old girlfriend of a clown-masked bank robber has thrown herself on the mercy of the court with a guilty plea to armed robbery charges for driving the getaway car and buying the shotgun used in the holdup.
Jasha Marie Howard of Mabelvale pleaded guilty Monday after Pulaski County Circuit Judge Herb Wright rejected arguments that Little Rock police had duped her into confessing to her role in the January 2016 holdup at the Bank of America branch on Cantrell Road.
Bank manager Sammy Lewis Jr. was shot in the right hand by the hooded and masked robber who stormed the bank brandishing a sawed-off shotgun and yelling his demands for money.
Lewis, 44, was shot as the gunman was leaving with the money. Security video shows the robber stopping, pointing the gun at Lewis and a customer, both seated at a desk, and then firing. The slug he fired also pierced the bank wall and lodged in a neighboring business.
Howard and boyfriend Tyrone Eugene Randolph Jr., now 18, were arrested five hours later. Randolph confessed first to police, then in court at an October hearing when he gave sworn testimony that he was the robber who had shot Lewis.
Randolph of North Little Rock said the shooting was accidental. He admitted to the robbery and shooting at a juvenile-transfer hearing in an attempt to persuade the judge that he should not be prosecuted as an adult because he was 17 at the time of the holdup. The judge denied his motion, and the issue is now on appeal.
Monday, Howard twice gave sworn statements that she knew what Randolph was up to when she bought the shotgun for him the night before the holdup. She also had driven them to and from the bank.
In exchange for her guilty plea to aggravated robbery, theft and furnishing a gun to a minor, prosecutors agreed to leave her punishment up to the judge at a March 20 sentencing hearing. The charges together carry a life sentence.
In the hearing to suppress her confession, Howard, whose father and grandfather are police officers, initially denied doing anything wrong.
She testified that police detective Carrie Lynn Mauldin told her she could go home if she told police what had happened. Howard acknowledged she'd signed a waiver giving up her right to an attorney and submitted to a recorded interview.
She said she didn't really understand what she was giving up and agreed to talk to Mauldin so she could leave. Howard said she had a migraine headache that also affected her ability to focus on the detective's questions.
"I was just trying to get it out of the way so I could go home," Howard told the judge.
"Do you know you were admitting to a crime?" her attorney Bill James asked.
"I don't think I did," she said. "I should have [been released]. I didn't do any of this."
Mauldin testified that almost everything she said to Howard was on the recording played for the judge during the hearing. She said she never suggested to Howard that she would be released after the interview.
Howard, on cross-examination by deputy prosecutor Scott Duncan, testified that everything she'd told the detective on the 26-minute recording was true.
She agreed that she never told Mauldin that she was feeling ill and that she had not given Mauldin any indication that she didn't know what she was doing. Duncan also observed that Howard is a high school graduate who had been enrolled in college when she was arrested.
Howard's voice is quiet and childlike during the interview, conducted about eight hours after the robbery.
She told the detective she'd shoplifted a pair of pants a month before the robbery as a gift for Randolph, whom she'd been dating for about a year.
She said Randolph needed some money, so he told her a couple of days before the robbery that he wanted "to hit a bank." He told her she would not get into trouble since she would not be involved, but she decided to go along with him.
"Considering he's my boyfriend, I didn't want nothing bad to happen to him, so I went," she said, describing how she prayed for his safety. "I didn't want to see him get shot ... bleeding on the ground."
Howard told the detective she thought Randolph wanted the money to help his mother, who was raising him and his two younger siblings.
"I think he gets tired of seeing his mama struggle," Howard said.
She said she bought a shotgun the night before the robbery, but denied it was for the robbery. Howard said she wanted to learn how to hunt deer and that she'd save up the $300 for it by working .
"That's the whole point of getting one," she said. "I want to do it [hunting]. That's something I really wanted to do all my whole life that I've never done."
Randolph had wanted her to buy a pistol, but she refused. Pressed by the detective, Howard said she bought the long gun for the bank robbery and to hunt.
Howard said she didn't know what bank Randolph wanted until he directed her to it. She said he changed clothes and put on the mask, then got out of the car with instructions for her to drive around but return for him in a few minutes.
She told the detective she heard Randolph fire the gun, but said he didn't tell her immediately what he'd done.
"When he got in the car, I said, 'Did you shoot somebody?' He said, 'I'll tell you later,'" she said. "I asked him again. He didn't say nothing. Then I asked him again. He said, 'Yes, baby.'"
The only thing she thought she might get out of the holdup was a trip out of state, Howard told the detective.
"We were talking one night about my life. And I told him why I don't like being in Arkansas," she said. "He was like, 'I'm gonna get you out.' I wasn't thinking nothing bad."
Metro on 03/09/2017