MARION, Ark. – Two men each took guilty pleas in two separate murder cases on Friday, Oct. 20, 2017, a release from Second Judicial Prosecuting Attorney Scott Ellington said.
Jessie Briscoe, 31, pleaded guilty to First Degree Murder on Friday. He stabbed Carla Brown, 41, twenty-six times, killing her in the same house where her three-year-old daughter was staying on September 4th, 2016. Judge Randy Philhours sentenced him to forty years in the Arkansas Department of Corrections.
Dwayne Antonio Smith, 21, pleaded guilty to Second Degree Murder on Friday. He beat his lover James Bedford, 27, to death with a hammer on April 21, 2017. Smith received fifty years in the Arkansas Department of Corrections for the murder, and received an additional sixteen years for an unrelated robbery charge.
Deputy Prosecuting Thomas Young prosecuted both cases for the State of Arkansas.
Second Judicial Prosecuting Attorney Scott Ellington said, “I want to thank Deputy Prosecutor Tom Young for his diligence in this case, as it led to getting two violent murderers off of our streets without putting the County through the cost of a trial. I also want to thank the West Memphis Police Department, particularly Sergeant Harvey Taylor and Lieutenant Troy Galtelli, for their thorough investigations that helped make these convictions possible.”
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