Mesquite Robbery Leads to Arrest of Five Suspects

Mesquite Police arrested five suspects in an armed robbery of a 7-Eleven store early Sunday morning. According to police, three suspects armed with handguns robbed the clerk of cash, cigarettes, and cigars. They fled in a stolen car and were pursued by police in a high speed chase that ended in Dallas. There were a total of five suspects in the car and all were captured after a foot chase.

Two of the suspects, D’andre Bryant and Marlon Perkins, were 17 years old and considered adults under Texas law. The other three suspects are juveniles. Police say the two adults confessed to the crime.

With the confessions and capture during a chase, the issue of guilt will be much harder to fight for the criminal defense attorney defending the two adults. However, their young age will could be very beneficial. Texas Aggravated Robbery charges are very serious and carry a penalty range of 5 years to 99 years or life. Also under Texas law, if a person has never before been convicted they are eligible for probation.

Another important factor will be whether the two adults have had any previous arrest as adults or juveniles. Prosecutors will obtain all previous arrest reports and use that along with the facts of the offense to decide what type of plea bargain they will offer. The defense will try to pursued the prosecutors to offer deferred probation if their clients are eligible. If a plea bargain can’t be reached, then the cases will either be tried before a jury or in front of a judge.

The juveniles will be charged in juvenile court which is a completely different system. The emphasis in juvenile court is on rehabilitating the child. There is a good chance the juvenile defendants could wind up with some type of probation. Again it depends on whether they have been handled in the system on previous occasions. Under some circumstances juveniles can be certified to be tried as adults but that is unlikely in this case. Certification as an adult usually only happens in murder cases or serious sex assault case. In this event, the victim wasn’t injured.