Fla. men convicted of robbery, attempted murder

Faulkner County jurors delivered identical guilty verdicts late Friday night for two men tried for robbing a Greenbrier bank and shooting at a policeman during the ensuing car chase last April.

James Walker, 25, and Cornelius Paige, 32, both of Orlando, Fla., were convicted of aggravated robbery, attempted capital murder, aggravated assault, second-degree unlawful discharge of a firearm from a vehicle, theft, felony and misdemeanor fleeing; and three reduced counts of kidnapping.

Defense attorneys had argued that the three tellers forced inside the vault of First Arkansas Bank and Trust on April 13, 2007, were safe and free to walk out after the robbers fled with the vault door left partially open.

Jurors, who heard more than 25 hours of testimony from Wednesday to Friday, entered deliberation at 6:42 p.m., returned with verdicts at 11:05 p.m., and had not sentenced the men as of presstime. Trial began exactly a year after formal charges were filed against the three men for stealing more than $140,000 and leading police in a pursuit that reached speeds of 110 mph southward on Highway 65, Interstate 40 and Highway 365.

The men's car crashed into a truck on I-40, blew a tire and they eventually exited the vehicle and fled police at White City Road and 365. Bus routes were cancelled for the Mayflower School District that day as law enforcers from around central Arkansas searched for the driver in some woods, and found him six hours later in a mud hole.

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One of the last witnesses to testify Friday was the only one this week to be called by defense attorneys Sarah Merritt, Jeff Wankum and Stuart Vess. Travis Allen, 23, of Orlando, said from the witness stand Friday that he and a woman had travelled to Texas with Walker, Paige and Barber. Allen said the group may have then stayed a week in Missouri or Arkansas, but he wasn't sure. Agent Doug Estes of Arkansas State Police later showed documents he found in the driver compartment of the men's Chevrolet Impala that Estes described as receipts for two Ramada Inn room reservations in Branson, Mo., from April 8 to 13, 2007.

Prosecuting Attorney Marcus Vaden, who during closing arguments said he didn't know why the men were in Arkansas to begin with and that he "really (doesn't) care," asked Allen what he and the group were doing as they traveled around. Allen said they had "hung out," and were "playing the game." Vaden asked, "What game?"

Allen replied, "PlayStation," and further testified that he and the other four had been traveling in two vehicles: A van, and a Pontiac Grand Prix. Supposedly on the morning of the robbery, Allen said he saw Walker, Paige and Barber exchange a duffel bag with a man in a red or maroon car, in an trade that took place in the parking lot of a hotel, or possibly a Fred's Pharmacy.

Merritt, who along with Wankum represented Barber, leaned on Allen's testimony in her closing argument and painted an alternate scenario to jurors in which Allen and the woman were awoken by the three defendants; saw bags and vehicles being exchanged; and left due to fear of illegal activity.

"He saw Cornelius (Paige) get out with the bag, he saw him go to the car, he saw another bag and he decided this wasn't right," Merritt said of Allen. "He was raised in the projects where you don't see a luggage exchange and (not) think something isn't right. (Allen) has his own conviction for possession of cocaine, and he thought he was watching a drug deal go down, so he booked."

According to Merritt, the time it took to travel the 11 miles between the bank at Greenbrier and Jake's Fireworks where sheriff's deputy Dusty Kirkpatrick began to follow the Impala was enough for the men trade a vehicle and cocaine for another car and more than $140,000:

"If the vehicle that had robbed the bank goes two miles down the road to the Fred's parking lot in Greenbrier, and they pull in where Mr. Walker, Mr. Barber and Mr. Paige are waiting with a bag that contains something of value, let's just say cocaine, and they trade that bag out for a bag that has we don't know how much money exactly, $142,000; let's think about that for a minute.

"Would that be a reasonable conclusion for how they could be in possession of the money for the bank robbery? Absolutely. The bank robbers paid them with the money from the bank robbery. Now let's think about this for a minute. If I rob the bank and then do a cocaine deal, it'd be kind of smart to have a gun wouldn't it? If I were a smart bank robber, it'd be really smart to throw the car into the deal and get rid of the car, because now you're not driving it anymore.

"The poor fools who sold you the cocaine are. And what's in the car, there's all kinds of other items that may or may not be used by the bank robbers, but if they were it'd sure be smart to leave that stuff with the other guys.

"It certainly would explain why some of the money was never recovered."

Vaden said in his final argument he thought the three were too smart to be swindled in the way that Merritt described.

"What they're hoping is that we are dumb enough to believe that when that (swindle) happened, the smart people who robbed the bank picked the three dumbest people in Florida they could find: These two and Mr. Barber, to somehow do a drug deal that we don't really have any evidence about, other than from Mr. Allen," Vaden said.

"And we're supposed to believe that those three smart people are probably laughing somewhere because they got drugs and apparently $8,000 of money that's never been found, and the three dumbest people then got in the car that had just freshly come from an aggravated robbery and just happened to have robbers' clothes, or at least clothes that closely matched them, and just happened to have a (9 mm) gun that's similar to the one that was described, and a knife that was similar to the one that was described, and all the money thieved from the bank in the bag like the one that was described."

Earlier in the day, jurors heard testimony from the bank manager, who said she saw a maroon four-door car with out-of-state tags pull into the bank and make a U-turn. According to the woman, two men matching the robbers' description given by the tellers grabbed her by the hair while inside the dark bank, threw her into the kitchen floor and pounded her head repeatedly after they had already obtained money from the vault.

The men kicked her "like a ball," according to the witness, who said was pistol-whipped and forced into the bank vault with the two tellers. The three women had been forced to crawl and "duck-walk," one said, into a vault from where more than $140,000 had been placed into an orange duffel bag by one of two masked robbers and one of the coerced tellers.

The bank manager said Friday she had to have knee surgery after the robbers beat her, and that she has worn braces to this day from being kicked in the face.

Walker and Paige were convicted of the attempted murder of ASP Cpl. Gregg Bray of Conway, whose family and friends embraced him after the late-night verdict was announced. Circuit Judge David Reynolds dismissed four additional attempted murder charges against the men since according to defense attorneys the six shots were fired in a continuous action. The men's driver, Johnta Barber, 27, faces as many felonies and further misdemeanor traffic offenses. He has been granted a motion for severance and would be tried independently.