LITTLE ROCK — A convicted murderer was sentenced to 30 years with no parole in prison last week for robbing a downtown Little Rock bank in May.
Jonathan Ross Hill, 36, pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery before Pulaski County Circuit Judge Herb Wright.
In exchange for his guilty plea to holding up the Centennial Bank on Broadway, prosecutors dropped related theft and drug-possession counts and recommended the 30-year term.
Hill is considered a violent offender because of his 1993 first-degree murder conviction, deputy prosecutor Barbara Mariani said. He faced a minimum 40-year sentence if he’d gone to trial on the robbery charge.
Hill entered the bank claiming to have a gun and demanded money before fleeing with an undisclosed amount of cash, police said.
He was arrested about two hours after the holdup when North Little Rock police found him in some woods off Camp Robinson Road. Evidence from the holdup was uncovered in his girlfriend’s apartment. He confessed after being arrested, according to an arrest report.
At the time of the holdup, Hill had been free on bond on a cocaine-possession charge from a February arrest following a traffic stop on Pike Avenue in North Little Rock for having a fictitious license plate on his car. He had cocaine in his pockets, police said. Prosecutors dropped that charge at last week’s proceedings.
In August 2007, Hill, who was living in Hensley at the time, was acquitted by a jury of aggravated robbery and theft charges over allegations he had carjacked a Jacksonville man, Edwin Hickles, in the parking lot of North Little Rock’s Mc-Cain Mall in November 2006.
Police had arrested Hill near the car and found a gun in the vehicle. Hill’s attorney called Hickles a liar who was trying to cover up for hiding from his girlfriend.
After the trial, Hill pleaded guilty to a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm and was sentenced to 13 years in prison. He was paroled in September 2010.
In August 1992, Hill was five months past his 16th birthday when he and two other teens robbed a North Little Rock convenience store on Maumelle Boulevard. A customer who stopped for his regular cup of coffee found the clerk, 31-year-old Michael Giles, dead from four gunshot wounds in a back room.
Hill and his teenage co-defendants, Eli Clean Esau and Marcus Lakeith Smith, were all charged with capital murder. In a plea bargain, Hill pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, admitting to being the getaway driver and telling authorities that Esau and Smith, then 17, had shot Giles and stolen beer and cigarettes after Giles refused to sell the items to them. The two teens also pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and were sentenced to 25 years and 20 years, respectively.
Last March, Esau, 36, was sentenced to six years in prison for felony fleeing and leaving the scene of a collision, a misdemeanor.
According to court records, Esau, driving a black Chevrolet Monte Carlo, was fleeing Little Rock police in September 2011 when he collided with a 2000 Honda driven by Stasia Donofrio on Ninth Street near Broadway. Officers had wanted to stop Esau for having a fictitious license plate on his vehicle. He had purchased the vehicle three weeks earlier.
After the crash, police chased Esau onto Interstate 630, then Interstate 430, where he drove into oncoming traffic, prompting police to quit the pursuit. But officers caught up with Esau again when he crashed at the intersection. He ran from the wreck, court records show, but Arkansas State Police troopers arrested him at I-430 and Markham.
Esau, who also has a rape conviction, will be eligible for parole in February.
Arkansas, Pages 14 on 12/13/2012