The Nebraska Supreme Court on Friday affirmed a Lincoln man's 33- to 50-year prison sentence for shooting Maurice Williams to death in 2014, saying a judge didn't err by refusing to let him withdraw his plea based on new evidence.
Joshua Carr, 21, is at the Lincoln Correctional Center and will be eligible for parole in 2033.
In September, Lancaster County District Judge Steven Burns sentenced him after rejecting his request to take back his no contest plea in the home-invasion robbery that left Williams dead.
On Aug. 30, 2014, two men armed with rifles burst into Williams' apartment at 51st and Vine to rob him, and Williams was shot in the chest.
On appeal, Carr's attorney, Sarah Newell of the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy, contended that he should've been allowed to withdraw his plea based on an interview with police a day after he made it.
People are also reading…
He purportedly said he had seen another man, one of Carr's co-defendants in a different robbery, with blood on his shirt around the time Williams was killed saying "we" made a mistake and that "Mo" was dead, who he took to mean Williams.
But Carr's other co-defendants hadn't said he was there the day of Williams' killing, so, Newell argued, it could have helped Carr challenge their credibility.
She said Carr only entered a plea agreement because he was a 19-year-old looking at a potential life sentence, which the manslaughter plea took off the table.
But Assistant Nebraska Attorney General Austin Relph countered that Burns was right to conclude the evidence wouldn't have helped Carr necessarily.
Carr still could have been there, as the others said he was, even if another co-defendant was too. And the defense hadn't offered the statements of the cooperating witnesses who had said otherwise, he said.
By law, if Carr was there, participating in the robbery, he would be guilty of felony murder.
On Friday, the state's high court found that the judge hadn't abused his discretion and affirmed Carr's conviction.