‘Young man, you have a chance,’ Macon judge tells just-convicted killer. ‘Use it’
On Wednesday morning, as jurors began filing into Bibb County Superior Court to hear lawyers’ opening statements in the murder case against Bradford Devonte Anderson, word emerged that Anderson was considering pleading guilty.
For more than two hours, Anderson, 21, mulled his decision.
He had been in jail the past two years after his arrest in the July 10, 2019, shooting death of 20-year-old Randon Shamar Hogan outside the Shell gas mart at 3750 Mercer University Drive just west of Macon Mall. Hogan, with whom Anderson had been close since childhood, was shot in the chest through a car door after Anderson wheeled up in another car, pulled alongside the car Hogan was in and opened fire.
So there in court Wednesday, Anderson, accused of multiple murder and firearms charges, weighed his options. He could continue to trial and take his chances, knowing that a guilty verdict for murder would mean at least 30 years in prison and, possibly, a life-without-parole sentence. Or Anderson, who had been 19 when the shooting happened, could accept an offer to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter and serve 20 years behind bars, plus 10 more on a firearms-possession charge, both of which come with a chance for early parole.
While he sat in the air-conditioned, 68-degree-chilled courtroom, his lawyer, Paul Christian, took off his own sport coat and handed it to Anderson to keep warm. “Don’t want anyone seeing you shivering,” Christian said.
In the end, after consulting with his family, Anderson chose to plead guilty.
Even if he serves all the years he has been sentenced to, with two years knocked off for time served since his arrest, Anderson would be still just be in his late 40s when is released from prison. During Anderson’s sentencing, Judge Howard Z. Simms mentioned the opportunity that Anderson had been afforded.
“Young man,” the judge began, “you have a chance — unlike a lot of folks that walk out of this room — to have a life. I suggest that you use it well, and not the way that so many people are doing around here. I heard somebody describe Macon the other day as an active-shooter situation. And that’s not far from being true. Too many dying, too many people are going to prison.”
Slightly more than 100 people have been homicide victims in Macon since Hogan’s death two summers ago.
Hogan and his brother had been friends, almost family, with Anderson since they were little boys.
Prosecutor Brian Granger in court Wednesday said that at some point prior to the shooting there had been “a falling out of sorts” between the Hogan brothers and Anderson. “A beef,” Granger added, “that was ongoing.”
Granger did not elaborate, but the feud was thought to have stemmed from an episode in which the Hogan brothers were involved in a fight with some other guys, a fight the brothers apparently felt Anderson should have taken part in.
The day of the shooting, Hogan had been a passenger in the car his brother was driving. They were about to pull away from the Shell mart’s parking lot when Anderson drove up beside them. Words were exchanged.
“And then Mr. Anderson fired one shot that went through the rear driver’s side door ... and that bullet struck Randon Hogan,” prosecutor Grangers said. “It was an in-and-out wound through the chest.”
Hogan’s brother, Ryan, rushed him to the hospital but he died.
Anderson turned himself in five days later to faces charges of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, possession of a firearm during commission of a felony and possession of a firearm by a first-offender probationer.
The latter charge is related to Anderson’s 2017 conviction here in a case involving a string of automobile break-ins.
This story was originally published August 11, 2021 at 4:25 PM.