WETUMPKA, Ala. A teenager tried as an adult under Alabama's accomplice liability law was sentenced to 65 years in prison Thursday after rejecting an earlier plea deal that recommended 25 years.
In a two-day trial in March, Lakeith Smith, now 18, of Montgomery was convicted of felony murder, burglary and theft for helping in the 2015 break-ins of two homes in Millbrook, about 10 miles north of Montgomery. He did not kill A'Donte Washington, 16, of Montgomery, who was part of a group of five accused in the thefts.
But several in the group, including Washington, fired shots at Millbrook police officers who responded Feb. 23, 2015, to a call of a burglary in progress, according to officer body-camera footage. The officer that Washington ran toward pointing a .38 caliber revolver fired his police-issued sidearm four times, killing Washington.
Smith was accused of being criminally responsible for the acts that led to Washington's death, the gist of Alabama's accomplice law. An Elmore County grand jury cleared the officer who fired the fatal shots; the officer's name was not released.
On Thursday, Judge Sibley Reynolds of Alabama's 19th Judicial Circuit Court handed down three sentences that Smith will serve back to back: 30 years for murder, 15 years for burglary and 10 years each for two theft convictions.
Smith smiled and laughed through the sentencing, said C.J. Robinson, chief assistant district attorney. Smith flashed a broad smile March 14 as he was led out of the courtroom shortly after the verdicts were announced.
I dont think Mr. Smith will be smiling long when he gets to prison, Robinson said. We are very pleased with this sentence. Because the sentences are consecutive, it will be a long time before he comes up for even the possibility for parole, at least 20 to 25 years.
Alabama's accomplice law states that a person is legally liable for the behavior of another who commits a criminal offense if that person aids or abets the first person in committing the offense. It wasn't immediately known how many states have similar statutes.
"The officer shot A'donte, not Lakeith Smith," Smith's lawyer, Jennifer Holton, said during the trial. "Lakeith was a 15-year-old child, scared to death. He did not participate in the act that caused the death of A'donte. He never shot anybody."
Other surviving defendants charged in the case Montgomery residents Jadarien Hardy, 22; Jadarien Jackson, 23; and LaAnthony Washington, 22 entered guilty pleas to charges of felony murder, burglary and theft, court records show. They are awaiting sentencing.
Poster Comment:
Ha, ha, ha!
Oh, for the good old days before Lyndon Bird's Great Society where boys had fathers and mothers. Lyndon's rotting in hell over his idiocy.
Lakeith, A'Donte, Jadarien , LaAnthony.
With names tacked onto them like these it appears they are then marked for the rest of their useless lives.
#40: sneakypete To: Hank Rearden (#7)
His mama and the usual male baby daddy suspects should get charged for that.
sneakypete posted on 2018-04-07 07:39:37 Reply Private Reply
#41: IbJensen To: sneakypete (#36)
IbJensen posted on 2018-04-07 07:39:47 Reply Private Reply
#42: buckeroo To: GrandIsland (#29)
Your compassion for your fellow man is astounding.
buckeroo posted on 2018-04-07 07:41:51 Reply Private Reply
#43: IbJensen To: sneakypete (#34)
The result of all this impregnation is very low IQs and lives screwed up to the extent that they, in turn, ruin the lives through murder and rape of other innocents who are trying to lead a good and honorable life.
IbJensen posted on 2018-04-07 07:45:05 Reply Private Reply
#44: sneakypete To: A Pole (#9)
I know you are a leftie idiot,but since you are a FOREIGN leftie idiot I will cut you a little slack on that brain fart. It's not your fault because you don't know any better.
His skin color had nothing to do with it. In FACT,in a lot of cases it helps get black criminals off because black juries won't convict if they think something smells about the charges.
It's called "jury nullification",and is SUPPOSED to be maybe the most important authority an American jury has,but the truth is there is nothing that pisses off judges more than taking their authority away.
I wish whites and everybody else would do the same. If a case stinks,it stinks,and anybody that doesn't think the police and the courts are capable of railroading someone just because they don't like them,they are so foolish they shouldn't be allowed to cross the streets by themselves.
After all,WHAT could be a more brilliant illustrated truth than a jury coming back from deliberations and telling a judge they find the defendant/defendants not guilty due to overcharging or bias on the part of the police or the courts?
That is something a FREE people have the power to do,and that is why judges and lawyers hate it so much.
sneakypete posted on 2018-04-07 07:47:19 Reply Private Reply
#45: sneakypete To: Liberator (#11)
AND.....,he will be getting out of prison as a middle-aged or old-man who has never had a job or even a job interview,and whose only skills are cleaning a prison cell.
This middel-agged or old man will also be released into a technological world that even we,who have a LOT more life experience and education than he does or will ever have,would find completely baffling.
Chances are he will be back in jail again in less than 90 days because that's all he knows and he is helpless as a free man.
sneakypete posted on 2018-04-07 07:51:02 Reply Private Reply
#46: sneakypete To: Liberator (#17)
So what? This is America and we are supposed to be free. In FREE COUNTRIES,people are charged with crimes they actually committed.
He and the group shot at cops.
I have seen no evidence he shot at cops or anybody else. IF he did,he bought the ticket and he can take the ride. If he didn't,it is a crime against him by the court system to accuse and sentence him for committing a crime he didn't commit.
There is either fair,or unfair. There is no in-between.
sneakypete posted on 2018-04-07 07:55:27 Reply Private Reply
#47: A K A Stone To: sneakypete (#45)
Also he didn't murder anyone so it is stupid to charge him with murder. His partner wasn't murdered was killed in self defense.
Charge the kid with what his crimes actually we're. That is justice.
A K A Stone posted on 2018-04-07 07:56:12 Reply Private Reply
#48: sneakypete To: Liberator (#18)
While that is probably true,it is irrelevant because it is not his fault he didn't and doesn't know any better. It is the fault of every elected Dim since LBJ for creating these monsters in exchange for votes.
Who can really blame him for laughing at the sentence when all his life all he has been taught is that nothing he does that society deems to be wrong is his fault? Thanks to the DNC he was RAISED TO BE A CRIMINAL AND A FOOL.
So.....,since nothing in his life has ever been his fault right up to that moment,why WOULDN'T he laugh at the concept of punishment for a crime he committed being real? I would be willing to bet he really and truly thinks it is "the white man's fault he wasn't born rich and famous so he didn't have to rob and steal to have expensive stuff to impress de ho's wid. And why wouldn't he,when that is the message his mama and society have given him every since birth? Suddenly,he IS faced with personal responsibility and punishment,so why is anyone surprised he isn't taking it seriously?
sneakypete posted on 2018-04-07 07:57:13 Reply Private Reply
#49: sneakypete To: Liberator (#20)
Let's not repeat that lie. Brutal laws are enacted because politicians use them as a tool to tell voters they are doing something to protect them from crime so they can get re-elected.
America wasn't created to be a "brutal state". It was created to be a JUST state for all her citizens. Charge him with what he is actually guilty of doing,and give him an appropriate sentence for those crimes. To give him "extra crime that is brutal to send a message" amounts to America committed crimes against her own citizens.
sneakypete posted on 2018-04-07 08:05:32 Reply Private Reply
#50: A K A Stone To: sneakypete (#48)
V
A K A Stone posted on 2018-04-07 08:07:35 Reply Private Reply
#51: sneakypete To: GrandIsland (#24)
Cool!
What do you propose happen to cops and DA's that overcharge,hide or suppress evidence,and otherwise waste the courts time and tax payers money while committing what amounts to crimes,themselves?
sneakypete posted on 2018-04-07 08:10:20 Reply Private Reply
#52: sneakypete To: A Pole (#30)
WHAT "mass murder",and WHO did he murder? Even the cops and the court don't claim he murdered anyone.
sneakypete posted on 2018-04-07 08:12:30 Reply Private Reply
#53: sneakypete To: IbJensen (#43)
I'm sorry. Are they sentencing him to 95 years in prison because he is the baby in a baby daddy case,and responsible for the circumstances of his birth,or for being part of a robbery crew?
If it is for being the off-sprung of a baby daddy,then the time for revolution to overthrow a unjust government is NOW.
sneakypete posted on 2018-04-07 08:16:34 Reply Private Reply
#54: sneakypete To: A K A Stone (#47)
I also know a guy that went to prison for bank robbery. He walked into one of the two banks in his hometown on a Friday afternoon with no mask or other attempt to hide his identity from the tellers who all knew him personally,pointed an unloaded gun at them,and told them it was a robbery and to give him all the money they had in their tills.
They did,and he sat right down in the floor,laid the unloaded pistol on the floor behind him,and waited for the deputy he went to school with to come arrest him.
He was a member of a paint crew that worked when they could find the work,and needed a kidney transplant and had no money and no insurance.
IIRC,he got a ten year prison sentence for bank robbery,and a new kidney. He also served about half the sentence given him.
Not all "criminals" are created equally.
sneakypete posted on 2018-04-07 08:21:42 Reply Private Reply
#55: sneakypete To: A K A Stone (#50)
I've seen people laughing in combat. I have even seen wounded people laughing after getting on a helicopter to get away from the battlefield.
We ain't machines,we are humans.
sneakypete posted on 2018-04-07 08:23:45 Reply Private Reply
#56: GrandIsland To: A Pole (#31)
Only in your libtarded tree hugging snowflake mind.
GrandIsland posted on 2018-04-07 08:41:15 Reply Private Reply
#57: GrandIsland To: sneakypete (#51)
There is already a system in place for that called a grand jury or preliminary hearing. Both are designed to see if there was probable cause to make the arrest, and are the charges filed the most appropriate for that probable cause charge(s).
GrandIsland posted on 2018-04-07 08:44:11 Reply Private Reply
#58: GrandIsland To: buckeroo (#42)
My republic doesnt need another WEAK mind, caused by compassion. So dont suggest that I turn into a fukeroo thinking snowflake.
Compassion is the catalyst for repeat offenses, welfare loopholes, laziness, and illegal immigration forgiveness... just to name a FEW of our ills.
GrandIsland posted on 2018-04-07 08:48:38 Reply Private Reply
#59: VxH To: sneakypete (#54)
Ever notice how Hollywood, with all its creative "genius" - has never made a movie about an actual Utopian future.
Why is that? Either they can't imagine it -or- they just like stirring the dystopian Military Industrial shyte pot.
VxH posted on 2018-04-07 09:19:52 Reply Private Reply
#60: misterwhite To: Pinguinite (#5)
Well, if one of these scumbags killed a homeowner during a robbery, wouldn't they all be charged with murder? Is that justice?
misterwhite posted on 2018-04-07 09:24:40 Reply Private Reply
#61: misterwhite To: VxH (#59)
California could pass a law tomorrow limiting prison costs to $30,000 per year. They are choosing not to. They should stop complaining.
misterwhite posted on 2018-04-07 09:28:21 Reply Private Reply
#62: VxH To: misterwhite (#61)
When is POodleTUS going use Tariffs to correct the trade balance between the Prison Industrial System and the non-Prison Industrial System?
VxH posted on 2018-04-07 10:06:24 Reply Private Reply
#63: misterwhite To: VxH (#62)
I would have prison inmates build a 3-foot high wall using 50-pound stones on one side of the exercise yard in the morning.
Then, after lunch, they would tear down that wall and re-build it on the other side of the exercise yard.
Every day. For zero cents per hour. Maybe they'll think twice about what prison really means.
misterwhite posted on 2018-04-07 10:19:34 Reply Private Reply
#64: IbJensen To: sneakypete (#53)
IbJensen posted on 2018-04-07 10:20:52 Reply Private Reply
#65: A Pole To: misterwhite, sneakypete, Pinguinite, Vicomte13, Tooconservative, Deckard (#61)
Ouch, it would hurt your buddies, from prison industry!
But why to stop at $30K?, would not be $3K be better? Or just down every convict?
Or better yet, kill everyone charged or suspected of any crime and misdemeanor. The paradise to your ilk.
The Tarantulas
Lo, this is the tarantula's den! Would'st thou see the tarantula itself? Here hangeth its web: touch this, so that it may tremble.
There cometh the tarantula willingly: Welcome, tarantula! Black on thy back is thy triangle and symbol; and I know also what is in thy soul.
Revenge is in thy soul: wherever thou bitest, there ariseth black scab; with revenge, thy poison maketh the soul giddy!
Thus do I speak unto you in parable, ye who make the soul giddy, ye preachers of equality! Tarantulas are ye unto me, and secretly revengeful ones!
But I will soon bring your hiding-places to the light: therefore do I laugh in your face my laughter of the height.
Therefore do I tear at your web, that your rage may lure you out of your den of lies, and that your revenge may leap forth from behind your word "justice."
Because, for man to be redeemed from revengethat is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms.
Otherwise, however, would the tarantulas have it. "Let it be very justice for the world to become full of the storms of our vengeance"thus do they talk to one another.
"Vengeance will we use, and insult, against all who are not like us"thus do the tarantula-hearts pledge themselves.
"And 'Will to Equality'that itself shall henceforth be the name of virtue; and against all that hath power will we raise an outcry!"
Ye preachers of equality, the tyrant-frenzy of impotence crieth thus in you for "equality": your most secret tyrant-longings disguise themselves thus in virtue-words!
Fretted conceit and suppressed envyperhaps your fathers' conceit and envy: in you break they forth as flame and frenzy of vengeance.
What the father hath hid cometh out in the son; and oft have I found in the son the father's revealed secret.
Inspired ones they resemble: but it is not the heart that inspireth thembut vengeance. And when they become subtle and cold, it is not spirit, but envy, that maketh them so.
Their jealousy leadeth them also into thinkers' paths; and this is the sign of their jealousythey always go too far: so that their fatigue hath at last to go to sleep on the snow.
In all their lamentations soundeth vengeance, in all their eulogies is maleficence; and being judge seemeth to them bliss.
But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!
They are people of bad race and lineage; out of their countenances peer the hangman and the sleuth-hound.
Distrust all those who talk much of their justice! Verily, in their souls not only honey is lacking.
And when they call themselves "the good and just," forget not, that for them to be Pharisees, nothing is lacking butpower!
My friends, I will not be mixed up and confounded with others.
There are those who preach my doctrine of life, and are at the same time preachers of equality, and tarantulas.
That they speak in favour of life, though they sit in their den, these poison-spiders, and withdrawn from lifeis because they would thereby do injury.
To those would they thereby do injury who have power at present: for with those the preaching of death is still most at home.
Were it otherwise, then would the tarantulas teach otherwise: and they themselves were formerly the best world-maligners and heretic-burners.
With these preachers of equality will I not be mixed up and confounded. For thus speaketh justice unto me: "Men are not equal."
And neither shall they become so! What would be my love to the Superman, if I spake otherwise?
On a thousand bridges and piers shall they throng to the future, and always shall there be more war and inequality among them: thus doth my great love make me speak!
Inventors of figures and phantoms shall they be in their hostilities; and with those figures and phantoms shall they yet fight with each other the supreme fight!
Good and evil, and rich and poor, and high and low, and all names of values: weapons shall they be, and sounding signs, that life must again and again surpass itself!
Aloft will it build itself with columns and stairslife itself into remote distances would it gaze, and out towards blissful beauties- therefore doth it require elevation!
And because it requireth elevation, therefore doth it require steps, and variance of steps and climbers! To rise striveth life, and in rising to surpass itself.
And just behold, my friends! Here where the tarantula's den is, riseth aloft an ancient temple's ruinsjust behold it with enlightened eyes!
Verily, he who here towered aloft his thoughts in stone, knew as well as the wisest ones about the secret of life!
That there is struggle and inequality even in beauty, and war for power and supremacy: that doth he here teach us in the plainest parable.
How divinely do vault and arch here contrast in the struggle: how with light and shade they strive against each other, the divinely striving ones.
Thus, steadfast and beautiful, let us also be enemies, my friends! Divinely will we strive against one another!
Alas! There hath the tarantula bit me myself, mine old enemy! Divinely steadfast and beautiful, it hath bit me on the finger!
"Punishment must there be, and justice"so thinketh it: "not gratuitously shall he here sing songs in honour of enmity!"
Yea, it hath revenged itself! And alas! now will it make my soul also dizzy with revenge!
That I may not turn dizzy, however, bind me fast, my friends, to this pillar! Rather will I be a pillar-saint than a whirl of vengeance!
Verily, no cyclone or whirlwind is Zarathustra: and if he be a dancer, he is not at all a tarantula-dancer!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
A Pole posted on 2018-04-07 10:22:38 Reply Private Reply
#66: VxH To: misterwhite (#63)
Maybe putting a tariff on the products manufactured by this system of unfair trade would fix things.
VxH posted on 2018-04-07 10:30:40 Reply Private Reply
#67: Tooconservative To: A Pole (#65)
TL;DR. And it's fucking poetry. I think you're growing a Marxist mangina or something.
You can't win any argument with Americans by quoting poetry.
Tooconservative posted on 2018-04-07 10:31:58 Reply Private Reply
#68: A Pole To: Tooconservative (#67)
Nietzsche was a Marxist! A man learns whole life. :)
A Pole posted on 2018-04-07 11:14:51 Reply Private Reply
#69: Tooconservative To: A Pole (#68)
He was mostly just kinda crazy, especially at the end of his life.
Tooconservative posted on 2018-04-07 12:09:13 Reply Private Reply
#70: A Pole To: Tooconservative (#69)
He was one of the most brilliant XIX century thinkers, about as good as Hegel, Marx and Dostoyevsky.
A Pole posted on 2018-04-07 12:51:45 Reply Private Reply
#71: Hank Rearden To: A Pole (#65)
So, not quite as smart as my dog, who is not as smart as my previous dog.
Zarathustra's quite the windbag, isn't he?
I think I lasted three lines.
Hank Rearden posted on 2018-04-07 15:28:10 Reply Private Reply
#72: A Pole To: Hank Rearden (#71)
You have no clue what you are talking about.
A Pole posted on 2018-04-07 16:19:57 Reply Private Reply
#73: Liberator To: A Pole (#70)
"Brilliant" as in "insane atheist-nihilist"?
Your definition of "brilliant" it criteria AND your heroes list are especially telling.
Nietsche: "I am dead because I am stupid...I am stupid because I am dead." (Uttered during his eventual bouts of insanity as a result of apparent demon possession.) Yeah, a real genius.
He was a virulent atheist who considered God and Christianity evil because he considered THEM 'in the way of his "god-hood." Nietsche political ideal: Aristocratic Nazism. HUGE influence of Hitler as one might imagine.
As to your other hero, Marx...WOW. It's ironic that you would attempt to take ANY moral high ground, especially on a thread like this.
Liberator posted on 2018-04-07 16:20:54 Reply Private Reply
#74: VxH To: A Pole (#68)
LOL.
"a smaller, almost ridiculous type, a herd animal, something eager to please, sickly, and mediocre.
"The concept of greatness entails being noble, wanting to be by oneself, being able to be different, standing alone and having to live independently."
--Beyond Good and Evil
Pretty sure Freddy wasn't a Marxist herd animal.
VxH posted on 2018-04-07 16:40:25 Reply Private Reply
#75: Vicomte13 To: A K A Stone (#47)
I agree. That's justice.
There's something about climate. The further South one goes in the US, the crazier and harsher the laws get.
Vicomte13 posted on 2018-04-07 17:30:44 Reply Private Reply
#76: A Pole To: VxH (#74)
Well, this was not exactly his point.
But here is a herd of supposed anti-Marxist drones who have no clue who Marx was about.
A Pole posted on 2018-04-07 17:36:19 Reply Private Reply
#77: VxH To: A Pole (#76)
Well why don't you tell us all "who Marx was about", Comrade A Pole?
VxH posted on 2018-04-07 17:37:52 Reply Private Reply
#78: buckeroo To: GrandIsland (#58)
So what is the point of a GREAT NATION? From your perspective: a few bucks sucked out of government funds for daily eight hour donut breaks that you routinely call "work?"
This MAGA BS has made you delusional about the essence of life.
buckeroo posted on 2018-04-07 17:40:50 Reply Private Reply
#79: A Pole To: VxH (#77)
If you ask politely, without calling me names, I might answer.
A Pole posted on 2018-04-07 17:44:01 Reply Private Reply
#80: VxH To: A Pole (#79)
VxH posted on 2018-04-07 17:45:17 Reply Private Reply
#81: A Pole To: VxH (#80)
Start calling me Sir.
A Pole posted on 2018-04-07 17:47:01 Reply Private Reply
#82: A K A Stone To: Vicomte13 (#75)
I've noticed the further you get in the South. The friendlier and the nicer the people are.
A K A Stone posted on 2018-04-07 17:53:07 Reply Private Reply
#83: sneakypete To: GrandIsland (#58)
Not to worry about anybody ever accusing you of thinking.
Not so sure about the rest of it,though.
sneakypete posted on 2018-04-07 17:59:12 Reply Private Reply
#84: sneakypete To: A Pole (#70)
I'm having a hard time trying to decide which is funnier,the joke I quoted,or the fact you don't think it's a joke.
sneakypete posted on 2018-04-07 18:03:23 Reply Private Reply
#85: sneakypete To: Liberator (#73)
None of those people were athiests. They believed wholeheartedly in the existence of a God,and they also believed they were looking at him each morning when they shaved.
sneakypete posted on 2018-04-07 18:05:26 Reply Private Reply
#86: sneakypete To: Vicomte13 (#75)
That's because of all the yankees some fool let move here. We need a border wall with the north,too.
0ne that now starts in Virginia.
sneakypete posted on 2018-04-07 18:08:09 Reply Private Reply
#87: GrandIsland To: sneakypete (#83)
GrandIsland posted on 2018-04-07 19:23:09 Reply Private Reply
#88: buckeroo To: GrandIsland, sneakypete (#87)
buckeroo posted on 2018-04-07 19:50:06 Reply Private Reply
#89: sneakypete To: buckeroo (#88)
Fire Island has never seen a law he didn't like.
sneakypete posted on 2018-04-07 20:32:40 Reply Private Reply