Federal prosecutors failed to unmask the two masked men who held employees and a customer at gunpoint during a 2015 robbery of Roberson's Fine Jewelry, a jury decided Thursday in acquitting Oklahomans Darris Denton and Quinshod Shaw of all charges.
The jury of eight women and two men spent four hours deliberating, after two days of testimony, before delivering "not guilty" verdicts on each man's charges of conspiracy to interfere with commerce by robbery, interference with commerce by robbery and using a firearm in relation to a crime of violence.
Denton and Shaw were added last year as defendants in a federal indictment originally handed up in 2016 that was superseded twice, gradually coming to accuse six men and one woman of being co-conspirators in the Sept. 22, 2015, robbery at the store in the Pleasant Ridge Town Center at 11525 Cantrell Road.
Employees testified that four men entered the store at 11:44 a.m. that day. While two of the intruders held the employees and a customer at gunpoint, one of the others smashed several glass display cases full of diamonds with a sledgehammer and the fourth scooped the diamonds out of the cases into a bag.
The men were only in the store 50 seconds before running back out and jumping into a truck parked out front that sped away, surveillance cameras showed.
The other four men charged in the case -- Tony Eugene Gabriel, Siee Ramon Russell, Darryl Dayon Madden and Jobie Lorenzo Kirk -- have all pleaded guilty and agreed to be the government's star witnesses against Denton and Shaw in return for leniency, either at sentencing or through a sentence-reduction request. In February, prosecutors dropped the sole charge of conspiracy against the woman, Lenora Denise "Neecie" Grant, with an option to file it again within a year.
"The government has given you nothing except a bunch of criminals who want a better deal and a more lenient sentence," Denton's attorney, Nicki Nicolo of Little Rock, told jurors in her closing argument Thursday, urging them to scrutinize the men's credibility.
"These people are professional robbers," echoed Shaw's attorney, Steven Davis of North Little Rock, adding, "They know what to say to get the best deal they can. The credibility's just not there."
Gabriel, who pleaded guilty Sept. 26, 2016, to aiding and abetting the robbery, saying he was the one who scooped up the jewels, and Kirk, who pleaded guilty to the conspiracy charge on Jan. 30, admitting to driving a getaway car back to Oklahoma, are awaiting sentencing.
Russell, who admitted being the smasher, pleaded guilty to the aiding-and-abetting charge on Oct. 6, 2016, and was sentenced Aug. 30 to a seven-year sentence to be served consecutively to a state sentence he was already serving. Madden, who admitted driving another getaway vehicle back to Oklahoma, was sentenced in October to a little over eight years in prison on his June 1 guilty plea to the conspiracy charge.
The admitted participants said they used the truck parked in front of the store, which they had stolen the night before, as the first getaway vehicle. They said it was abandoned behind the shopping center where it was driven to the other two vehicles in which the robbers got away.
Assistant U.S. attorneys Erin O'Leary and Pat Harris responded to the defense attorneys' complaints about the main witnesses' credibility by countering that the robbery was all about making "quick, easy money," which they said the testimony proved both Denton and Shaw were in desperate need of at the time. O'Leary urged jurors to consider the relationships between the men to discern whether they were telling the truth -- pointing in particular to the testimony of Russell, who, "through tears, told you that his 'little brother' was one of the robbers."
She was referring to Russell's identification of Denton as a participant in the robbery. Russell testified that Denton was the son of a man known as "Pee Wee," with whom Russell had served time in prison. Other admitted participants testified that they also knew "Pee Wee" and said that's why they agreed to let his purported son accompany them even though they had just met him.
Nicolo characterized the admitted robbers' photo identifications of Denton as suspicious, pointing out earlier statements in which some of them claimed not to know who he was. She also criticized the main FBI agent in the case, saying he was "dishonest."
She offered two reasons for Russell's "emotional testimony," saying it was the result of either lying or telling the truth, but, "you never know."
Davis described Russell's "slow, mumbled" speech and his tendency to put his hand over his face while talking as "classic indications of somebody lying."
Davis described Kirk as "a cold-hearted man, who obviously would sell anybody down the river to advance his own interests."
A transcript of a detention hearing conducted in September 2016 in a federal courtroom in Oklahoma City quoted an FBI agent as saying that Kirk had bragged about being involved in several jewelry store heists dating to 1984, had a history of eluding police and had a capital-murder conviction for killing a police officer in the 1980s.
"You have only the testimony of four criminals -- robbers, liars and thieves -- against my client," he said, referring to Shaw.
After the verdict, Davis described Shaw, who has been in custody for a year, "exuberant." Denton won't be released because he is still serving time in Oklahoma on unrelated charges.
Metro on 03/09/2018