After a codefendant who went to trial was sentenced to 125 years in prison last week, a third man charged in the 2008 abduction and attack of two college students pleaded guilty this morning in return for a 30-year no-parole sentence.
Rarlo Primes, 24, who faced 100 years or more if convicted in a trial, entered an Alford plea, or best-interests plea, to especially aggravated kidnapping and especially aggravated robbery.
Rape charges were dismissed as part of the plea which was approved by the victims and their families.
?We had a very strong case against him and felt a conviction was likely, but we had to take into account the toll another trial would take on the victims and having to explain again something that was unimaginable to most people,? said state prosecutor Ray Lepone. ?We want them to have closure.?
Lepone said a plea offer was made to Primes only because he was not a rapist or a shooter that night, although he was armed and actively involved in the initial carjacking.
The victims, two University of Memphis students, were carjacked at gunpoint Dec. 29, 2008, from the parking garage of the woman?s apartment in The Stratum at 510 S. Highland while Jermaine Owens followed in another vehicle to the dead end of James Street near Walker and South Bellevue.
There, in a nighttime attack that lasted at least an hour, the students were beaten and pistol whipped. The female student was raped by two of the men and the male student was shot in the back.
According to the victims? testimony, Owens, 27, and James Hamilton, 19, raped the woman and Owens shot the male student in the back and urinated on him.
Primes said they chose the victims while driving on the interstate in the wee hours of the morning and followed them to the Highland apartment building.
All three admitted their involvement, though prosecutors said the defendants tried to minimize their actual roles.
?The whole thing it was supposed to be just hop out, robbery, hop back in and leave,? Primes told police after his arrest. ?It wasn?t supposed to be no kidnapping, no rape, no shooting, nothing like that.?
Hamilton pleaded guilty earlier this year and was sentenced to 35 years in prison with no parole.
Under Primes? Alford plea, he does not admit to guilt, but acknowledges the facts would likely lead to conviction in trial and to a stiffer sentence. The plea, otherwise, has the same effect as a guilty plea.
Defense attorney Claiborne Ferguson said the plea agreement was ?a good disposition for all involved.?
Criminal Court Judge Lee Coffee, who sentenced Owens last week, allowed Primes to hug his mother in the courtroom before being led away.
He will be credited with more than 3 years he has been in jail awaiting trial.
Lepone said there may have been a fourth man involved in the case who has never been identified.
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