The State
June 20, 2015
The third suspect in the 2013 killing of a 33-year-old mother of four during a robbery at a Columbia bakery agreed to a plea deal in court Tuesday, then changed his mind when he was in front of the judge.
The deal, negotiated by prosecutors and defense attorneys in the case of Troy Stevenson, 20, would have reduced the murder charge to voluntary manslaughter for his involvement in the shooting death of Kelly Hunnewell. The offer included a 20-year prison sentence with no chance at parole.
After both prosecutors and Stevenson’s defense attorney, Aimee Zmorczek, agreed that he would take the deal, Stevenson ended up not accepting the deal in front of Circuit Judge Robert Hood.
During the trial’s opening statements, assistant solicitor Dolly Garfield said that because of the state’s accomplice liability laws, otherwise known as “the hand of one is the hand of all” doctrine, Stevenson was just as guilty in the shooting death of Hunnewell as his co-defendants, who were each found guilty of murder in December.