FAYETTEVILLE : Man pleads guilty in 2007 murders
Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008
FAYETTEVILLE — A 21-year-old man accepted a plea bargain Monday, giving him 50 years in prison for his role in the 2007 murder of a Fayetteville couple.
Jesse Lee Westeen pleaded guilty to two counts of accomplice to first-degree murder in Washington County Circuit Court and was sentenced to 25 years on each count. The sentences will be served consecutively.
He initially was charged with being an accomplice to capital murder in the April 3, 2007, slayings of Kevin Barkley Jones and Kendall Rachell Rice, both 24, and faced life in prison without parole.
Westeen took the plea bargain as opening statements were scheduled to begin Monday after attorneys spent the morning picking a jury.
“The least he’ll serve is 35 years, which means he’ll be an old man when he gets out,” Kinlee Sharpe, Rice’s sister, said after court. “We feel satisfied with the plea, but there’s still not a day that goes by that [our family ] doesn’t think of Kendall. There’s something every single day that reminds us.”
Westeen drove the shooter, Gregory Christopher Decay, to Jones’ and Rice’s apartment knowing that Decay had a gun and that he said he would kill the couple, prosecutors said.
Decay, 22, is awaiting execution after a jury in April convicted him of capital murder and handed down the first death sentence in Washington County in more than 20 years.
Decay told police he was angry with the couple because they’d stolen marijuana from him. Decay’s claim about the theft wasn’t true, police said.
Once inside, Decay shot Jones, then Rice, both at close range in the face. He grabbed a spent shell casing and wiped the doorknob before he left, he said in a confession.
Westeen was waiting in the car on the other side of the building and helped Decay dispose of the gun, which never was found, prosecutors said.
At jury selection Monday, the defense said that Westeen didn’t know Decay was serious about killing the couple when he drove Decay to the apartment.
Attorney Tim Buckley said Westeen has a low IQ and is “not so smart.”
“A large part of this case comes down to what [Westeen ] knew and when he knew it,” Buckley said during jury selection.
Westeen may have been duped into agreeing with police during interrogation that he knew Decay was going to kill the couple, Buckley said.
“You’d have to be pretty stupid,” one juror candidate said.
“We’ll get to that later,” Buckley said, referring to evidence that would have been put on at trial.
After the plea was struck, Westeen rubbed his eyes at the defense table.
Westeen’s parents cried quietly in a front row in the courtroom.
The victims’ families were also in court.
Janice Jones, who found her son’s and Rice’s bodies the morning after the shooting, rested her head in the nook of her husband Robbie’s shoulder. Robbie Jones is a football coach for Bentonville High School.
Vicki Rice agreed to the plea because it eliminated any chance of Westeen being convicted of a lesser crime at trial, she said.
“Second-degree [murder ] would not have been acceptable,” Vicki Rice said. “This way, he’s 100 percent guilty, and there’s no way he can be an accomplice to a crime again.”
“No matter how stupid he is,” Sharpe added.
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