Police-hating MySpace comments help earn Stuart robber cell space for 12 years
August 11th, 2009 by TCPalm.comNote to teens facing a potential prison term: don’t use your MySpace page to post photos of police officers and wish “AIDS and genocide to all law enforcement.”
That’s what Stuart resident Jesse Alan Walker, 19, did while awaiting a June trial in which a jury convicted him of robbery with a firearm related to a 2008 home invasion armed robbery. At trial, he was accused of planning the robbery with two then-20-year-old co-defendants, who once played football for Jensen Beach High School.
“I hate the (expletive) police,” Walker posted on MySpace last December, along with photos of Stuart Police officers and derogatory comments.
After listening Monday to Walker’s family members plea for leniency on his behalf, Chief Circuit Judge Steve Levin indicated he’d considered Walker’s MySpace anti-law enforcement speech in ordering him to prison for 12 1/2 years, followed by a year of community control and 15 years of probation.
Walker’s family, Levin noted, “obviously painted a bright picture.
“His MySpace page certainly has not,” he said. “And it concerns the court; it concerns the court greatly regarding that.”
Arrest reports show on Feb. 27, 2008, co-defendant Dennis Palmer of Jensen Beach stormed into a Vine Street home armed with a Glock handgun and demanded money from the couple inside. The victims lost jewelry, credit cards, a cell phone and $90.
Within hours, deputies arrested Palmer and getaway driver Joshua Ash, 20, of Palm City. Walker, then 17, and already on juvenile probation, was a passenger in the car.
A onetime linebacker and quarterback for Jensen Beach High in 2004, Palmer pleaded no contest to home invasion armed robbery and was sentenced to a 10-year prison term. Ash pleaded no contest to the same charge and was sentenced to just under seven years in prison and five years of probation. Both men fingered Walker at his trial as the one who planned the crime — a fact Levin also noted.
Though he rejected a prosecutor’s argument to send Walker to prison for life, Levin characterized as “abhorrent” his juvenile and adult criminal past of gun and drug charges.
“That bothers the court greatly,” Levin said.
Walker apologized for the content posted at his MySpace pages.
“I was on a lot of drugs and didn’t see anything wrong with it,” said Walker, who’s been receiving drug rehabilitation while in jail. “I couldn’t believe how stupid I was and the things I was saying, how ignorant, and I’m sorry.”
His legal troubles aren’t over yet.
In March, he was arrested again at his Alamada Way home on gun and drug possession charges. While serving a search warrant, Stuart police found a .22 caliber rifle, boxes of bullet and two loaded magazines.
By Melissa E. Holsman
Tags: arrest, beach, car, cell, chief, communication, contest, court, Crime, deputies, deputy, driver, drugs, firearm, football, gun, guns, handgun, handguns, jail, jewelry, judge, jury, man, money, painting, photos, plea, police, possession, prison, probation, rifle, robbery, Schools, search, Stuart, teen, teens, trial, walker, warrant

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