‘Young and dumb.’ Teen robbers get rare second chances at dramatic Macon hearing
Ty’Reek Young was 14 when he was implicated a few years ago in a pair of Macon carjackings.
Laquerro Harris Jr. was 16 when he was involved in robberies at three dollar stores across the city’s south side.
In part because of their youth and their somewhat peripheral roles in the crimes — which happened in late 2019 — Young and Harris were this week granted plea deals.
They admitted guilt to less-serious charges in exchange for reduced sentences, but with the caveat that, if called upon, they will testify against their alleged accomplices.
As it happened, Young and Harris, who had no prior records, were represented by the same lawyer. Their cases, while not related, drew to a close during the same set of hearings Monday afternoon in Bibb County Superior Court.
What unfolded in open court was a revealing glimpse into how judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys on occasion find ways — when circumstances merit — to grant second chances to defendants deemed worthy of such considerations.
The efforts can be a balancing act. No one wants to send a kid — “a child,” as the judge would refer to one of the boys Monday — to prison for 20 or 30 years. But sometimes, due to the sinister nature of the crimes committed, there is no other option.
In this case, though, there was.
Harris had been arrested the day after Christmas in 2019, the day of his 17th birthday. He was jailed in connection with armed holdups at two Dollar General stores and one Family Dollar over a span of about three months in which he and two other teens were accused. Harris was said to have been the gunman in one of the heists.
In the immediate wake of the third stickup, at the Family Dollar on Houston Road, prosecutors said Harris’ mother showed up at the store worried that Harris may have been one of the bandits. She was shown surveillance footage of the robbery. “Yes,” she told investigators, “that’s my son.”
In court on Monday, having spent the past 28 months in jail, Harris pleaded guilty to three counts of robbery by intimidation. On each count he was sentenced to 12 years with five of those years in prison and the rest on probation. But because he will be allowed to serve the sentences simultaneously, Harris, who receives credit for the two-and-a-half years he has already served, could be released soon.
Had he been convicted of the more serious armed robbery charges, he would have spent, at minimum, 30 years behind bars and a maximum of 60 locked up.
Judge Howard Z. Simms was at first reluctant to OK the deal Harris was offered. But because Harris was 16 at the time of the heists and had not, according to prosecutors, been the crimes’ mastermind, the judge, after considering it privately, allowed the plea.
Harris’ attorney, John Carter, said of Harris, “He’s had a lot of time sitting there (in jail) to think ... and this is not the kind of life he wants to live. He is gonna go home to his mom when he is released and get a job.”
The judge asked Harris if he had anything to say.
“No, sir,” said the soft-spoken Harris, who will turn 20 in December.
The judge raised his left hand from beneath his black robe and held his thumb and index finger about an inch apart.
“Son,” he said to the blank-faced Harris, “you need to understand something. I came about this close to not agreeing to this.”
The judge reminded Harris of how the crimes could have landed him in prison until Harris was “old and gray-headed.”
“The state of Georgia,” Simms said, “has decided to give you a break.”
‘That astounds me’
Meanwhile, as Harris was sentenced, Ty’Reek Young sat across the courtroom on a wooden bench, his hands cuffed, his feet shackled.
Young will not turn 18 until late December.
Two-and-a-half years ago, he was arrested along with four other young people in connection with a pair of carjackings.
Young was 14 at the time, a dozen days shy of his 15th birthday.
“Fourteen?” the judge said as the charges against Young were read aloud.
Young then pleaded guilty to reduced charges, to second-degree hijacking of a motor vehicle and to attempted robbery by intimidation.
Prosecutor Dawn Baskin said that among the five suspects in the crimes that Young was “one of the least” involved. She said his cooperation with investigators also played in his favor.
“Our hope,” Baskin said, “is that through this process he has learned that when you lay down with dogs you wake up with fleas. ... You’ve been given a break. I know it doesn’t feel like it, but you have.”
She told Young that he could easily have been imprisoned 50 years, and also noted that Young must, if asked to, testify against his alleged accomplices.
Carter, Young’s lawyer, said Young was well aware of the lengthy prison term he could have faced.
Carter mentioned again the surprising matter of his client’s youth, that Young “was 14 when this occurred, which is mind-boggling.”
“That,” the judge said, reiterating his own amazement, “astounds me.”
‘Young and dumb’
As Simms often does from the bench during sentencings, he asked Young why he turned to crime.
Simms asked Young to explain how he had run afoul so drastically at such an early age.
No answer came.
“You’re a child,” the judge said. “You are a child.”
Simms asked Young what went wrong. “Enlighten me,” the judge said. “What is it? Is it a rite of passage. Is it something you feel like you’ve got to do? Are you getting money out of it? Is it just for the thrill? What is the deal?”
“I don’t know,” said Young, who had been in the eighth grade, held back for a year as it were, when he was arrested for the carjackings.
“What was it?” the judge said, pressing for an answer.
“I really don’t know,” Young said. “Just young and dumb.”
The judge stressed the severity of Young’s crimes and the harshness of the sentence that Young could have faced.
Then the judge did something unexpected.
He turned to Harris who was sitting maybe 30 feet away, awaiting his return to the county jail.
“You need to listen up, too,” Simms told him.
Armed robbery, the judge went on, “it’s not cool.”
“I don’t get it,” he added, addressing both Young and Harris. “It isn’t like you got caught putting bubblegum in your pockets at the Dollar General and walking out the door. You started at the top of the criminal food chain almost.”
Simms said the two had been facing “more time in the penitentiary than you’ve been alive.”
“Nobody,” he said, “held a gun to your head and made you go out there and do it. You chose to do it. ... Young and dumb. I like that. That pretty much sums it up.”
‘Y’all got your break’
The hearing wasn’t over.
The judge was still pondering, trying to wrap his head around the big trouble the teens before him had found themselves in.
Carter, the defense attorney, told Simms that in his experience some young offenders aren’t aware of just how long they can be sent to prison. Word of maximum sentences often comes as shocking news. Many adults even don’t know that the sentence for any murder conviction in Georgia is at least 30 years behind bars with no early parole.
As Young and Harris looked on, the judge told them, “Y’all got your break today. And you got a helluva one. ... When you start where y’all started and you got this break, you ain’t getting anymore.”
Then Simms said, “I hope y’all get it figured out. I’ve put enough folks in the penitentiary. But I’ll put you there if I have to.”
Young, who was sentenced to 15 years with two years of incarceration, was released from jail Monday night. If he stays out of trouble, his time on probation could end in 2029.
Before he left court Monday, Young told the judge that his grandfather is a pulpwood man and that Young plans to find work with him.
“It’s honest work,” the judge told Young. “It’ll make a man out of you.”
“Thank you,” Young said.