Robber gets 31-year term for heist at central Arkansas store; workers locked in restroom while cash stolen

A former Jacksonville man has been sentenced to 31 years in prison for participating in the armed robbery of a Dollar General store in that city about a week after Thanksgiving 2016.

Jurors concluded the two-day trial before Pulaski County Circuit Judge Barry Sims on Wednesday with about two hours of deliberations to find Jerrod Craven, 22, guilty of two counts of aggravated robbery and one count of theft.

Prosecutors said Craven was one of two masked men who entered the store at 2001 Old Military Road just before closing on Nov. 30, 2016, and made off with about $2,400 after locking the two store clerks in the restroom. The robbers also tampered with the store surveillance system and locked the store so that police, called by the women on their cellphones, had to break a window to get inside.

Craven did not testify, but his lawyer, Mark Hampton, told jurors that the case against the Russellville man rested almost entirely on the lies of his co-defendant, 22-year-old Jalen Hudson of Crossett.

"Jalen is a liar about so much stuff that you will not believe him about anything," Hampton said.

Police had no DNA, no fingerprints and no surveillance video to tie Craven to the holdup, Hampton said. Neither of the clerks, Rachel Hale and Christina Waltman, were able to get a good enough look at the robbers to identify them. Both men had hoodies pulled tightly over their faces.

But authorities did have Craven's phone records -- "hard and fast digital data" -- that not only showed Craven was at the scene, but also showed his travels that night, confirming Hudson's account of the holdup while undercutting Craven's version of events, deputy prosecutor Jennings Morgan told jurors.

In his closing argument, deputy prosecutor Matt Stauffer told jurors that in a case with so many lies, the only thing that could not lie were the phone records that Pulaski County sheriff's deputies had used to track Craven.

Testifying on Tuesday, Hudson said he, Craven and a third man, Stacy Quantrell Cox Jr., 21, of Jacksonville, had started planning the holdup a couple of days earlier while they were in Crossett together.

"We all said we needed to hit a lick," he told jurors.

Hudson said he was the lookout while Cox and Craven went into the store after putting on their hoodies and sweatpants in the car. Hudson said he drove around the neighborhood watching out for police before parking at the convenience store across from the Dollar General. He said he was in phone contact with Cox the entire time.

Hudson implicated Craven as one of the two robbers from almost the moment he was arrested. But on cross-examination by the defense, Hudson acknowledged he'd only come clean about Cox being the second robber two weeks before the trial. Hudson admitted he'd spent the previous 18 months telling authorities another man was that second robber.

He said he and Cox had been such close friends that he had been trying to protect Cox by naming someone else as the robber.

He decided to tell the truth about Cox, who has not been charged, because Cox had implicated him in a January 2017 bank robbery in Ashley County, he said.

"I was trying to protect him, but when he took a deal to testify against me in Ashley County, all of that went out the window," Hudson said. "He basically threw me under the bus, so all of that loyalty went out of the window."

Hudson also admitted he'd lied quite a bit to investigators, telling jurors he'd been trying to minimize his role before learning how much evidence authorities had against him.

Questioned by the defense about how jurors could believe an "admitted liar," Hudson rejected that description.

"I won't say I am an admitted liar," he said. "But I will say I haven't told the truth a lot."

Hudson testified for prosecutors as part of an arrangement that saw him receive a 20-year prison sentence for his role in planning the 2017 Ashley County bank robbery and the Jacksonville robbery and for participating in a Dec. 11, 2016, holdup at the Sherwood Dollar General at 17809 Batesville Pike.

But he denied defense accusations that he was cooperating with prosecutors hoping to get a break on another armed-robbery charge, one that had came to light shortly before Craven's trial.

Hudson, at the advice of his attorney Joe Joslin, sitting next to him in the witness box, wouldn't answer questions about that case, telling jurors he was invoking his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself.

Hudson became a suspect in the Dollar General holdups about a month after the Sherwood robbery when he was arrested in Ashley County in connection with the Jan. 10, 2017, holdup of the Simmons Bank in Parkdale.

Hudson, Cox and Marquez Trevion Rushing, 19, of Crossett, were arrested shortly after the bank robbery. Cox and Rushing each pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery and kidnapping in exchange for lengthy prison sentences, while Hudson pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery.

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Metro on 06/22/2018

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