LIGHT PRISON TERMS FOR 2 MEN IN ROBBERY-MURDER

SAN DIEGO

Two men who admitted their roles in the baseball batbeating death of a 71-year-old North Park man 20 years ago were sentenced Friday to low prison terms by a judge who said the real killer was walking around free.

Terrence Maurice Brown, 38, who pleaded guilty to robbery, was given the lowest possible state prison term of two years. Lester Roshunn Bell, 39, received three years for voluntary manslaughter.

San Diego Superior Court Judge Runston Maino said both men entered guilty pleas early in the process and testified truthfully against a third defendant, Edward Jamar Brooks. Therefore, he said, he was not inclined to give them stiffer penalties.

“The sad thing is, the man who wielded the bat is not going to prison for that,” Maino said.

When Brooks went to trial in 2019, jurors split 9 to 3 in favor of convicting him of murdering Leray Parkins on Aug. 23, 2000. In a re-trial this year, jurors deadlocked in the opposite direction, 9 to 3 for acquittal. Superior Court Judge David Gill declared a mistrial and dismissed the case.

In testimony, all three men agreed that they had gone to North Park to buy marijuana, but when they happened upon the 71-yearold man in an alley, they decided to rob him. Brown and Bell said Brooks grabbed a bat out of the trunk of a car and attacked Parkins.

Afterward, the three used Parkins’ credit cards. The bat believed to be the murder weapon was found in a Spring Valley home the defendants frequented, but that wasn’t enough evidence to support arrests. Advanced DNA testing of Parkins’ shorts in 2018 revealed Brooks had touched the inside of a pocket. All three were arrested in 2018.