Man sentenced in 2018 Super Bowl Sunday murder over apparent Macon drug deal
A Macon man accused of gunning down a 33-year-old man he sometimes bought drugs from was found guilty of murder Friday in Bibb County Superior Court.
A jury of nine men and three women deliberated for about an hour and a half before convicting Keith Beddingfield Jr., 27, of Jones County, of shooting and killing Javaris A. Brown the afternoon of Feb. 4, 2018, which was Super Bowl Sunday.
Beddingfield, also convicted of armed robbery in the case, was sentenced to life without parole.
Testimony in the trial, which began Tuesday, revealed that Brown, a father of three who lived with his girlfriend and sold drugs on the side, had been robbed at gunpoint the day before during an apparent drug deal.
Prosecutors said Brown lost $800 cash in the stickup and that he soon concluded that Beddingfield had set up the robbery.
Brown then arranged to meet Beddingfield the next day near the intersection of Napier and Carling avenues, an encounter that prosecutors say ended with Brown dead inside the Hyundai Sonata he borrowed from his girlfriend.
Brown was shot three times in the head and once in the neck.
Beddingfield’s wife at time, who police say drove Beddingfield to the meeting with Brown, later implicated Beddingfield and this week testified against him.
Another prosecution witness, Kelvin D. Johnson took the stand Thursday and told how Beddingfield, a few months after his arrest, called Johnson on a contraband cellphone from inside the county jail to arrange a hit on Beddingfield’s former wife to keep her from testifying.
The plot was never carried out and the call Beddingfield was said to have made from jail was being monitored by detectives who had tapped the phone to listen in on conversations of inmates using the smuggled phone.
After Friday afternoon’s verdict was read and Beddingfield was awaiting sentencing, prosecutor Sandra Matson, in asking the judge to send Beddingfield to prison for the rest of his life, said, “This was a heinous crime. He executed Javaris Brown with four gunshots to the head, making sure that he would not live to speak another day. ... He then attempted to hire a hitman out of the jail (to kill his former wife).”
Matson added: “He’s a danger to society and should never walk free again.”
Judge Howard Z. Simms later asked Beddingfield if he had anything to say.
“I’m innocent,” Beddingfield said.
“Yeah, well, those people over there (on the jury) didn’t see it that way,” the judge said. “And, frankly, neither did I.”
Simms told Beddingfield, “You reached out from inside the county jail, where everybody was supposed to be protected from you, and did your dead-level best to have the only witness against you killed. That aggravates this way beyond a normal case.”
The judge noted that Beddingfield had offered to pay a prospective hitman as much as $1,000 to have his ex-wife, the eyewitness against him, murdered.
Simms said that, in essence, Beddingfield could have — had the plot been carried out — been responsible for two killings for $500 each.
“Life’s cheap around here, Mr. Beddingfield,” the judge said, “on account of people like you.”
This story was originally published February 7, 2020 at 4:02 PM.