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17-year sentence upheld for career bank robber with mental issues

ANNIE YAMSON
Special to the Legal News

Published: July 2, 2015

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed the conviction of a bank robber with a lengthy criminal history.

Roland Jerome Lamarr appealed from the judgment of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio and challenged the sufficiency of the evidence supporting his conviction and the procedural reasonableness of his sentence.

Lamarr was indicted on June 19, 2013 on one count of unarmed bank robbery.

His trial began on Feb. 25, 2014 and the next day he was convicted by a jury.

Lamarr’s criminal history included eight previous bank robberies and he was classified as a career offender.

Based on that status, his offense level and sentencing guidelines, he was sentenced to a 210-month term of incarceration and three years of postrelease control.

The district judge noted that the sentence was on the low end of Lamarr’s advisory range due to his mental issues.

Case summary states that Lamarr robbed a Charter One Bank branch on May 2, 2013 by walking up to a teller window and holding up a note written on a deposit slip that said “Hand me a stak (sic) and make it all $100s.”

The teller, Tamika Wilkerson-Croom, had been keeping an eye on Lamarr most of the day.

She testified that she had seen him sitting on a bench near the bank and noticed that he seemed “a little out of place.”

Shortly after that, she observed Lamarr enter the branch and go to a check writing desk.

Wilkerson-Croom stated that she believed Lamarr seemed suspicious and felt she might be robbed so she “began to pay a little more attention.”

She wrote down a physical description of Lamarr and moved money from the front of her drawer to the back where it would be out of sight.

When Lamarr approached her window and showed her the note, Wilkerson-Croom responded that she did not have $100 bills, to which Lamarr replied, “Give me what you have.”

Wilkerson-Croom gave Lamarr cash from the front of her drawer amounting to about $325, along with a dye pack disguised as a stack of $20 bills.

But Lamarr recognized the dye pack and pushed that stack of cash back toward Wilkerson-Croom saying, “You can keep that.”

Lamarr then asked Wilkerson-Croom if he could keep the note that he had shown her and she said that he could. He then walked out of the bank.

When asked why she handed the money over, Wilkerson-Croom testified, “When he held the note up, I was concerned for the people that were in the branch as well as for myself.”

Lamarr was apprehended only a few blocks from the bank. Police found a large wad of money on him as well as the note that he had shown the teller. A fingerprint matching Lamarr was later found on the note.

Court documents state that Lamarr was 59 years old and homeless when he committed the robbery.

“He has a long history of mental health problems, including paranoia and schizophrenia, for which he has received treatment for over 20 years,” Judge Eric Clay wrote in the opinion he authored on behalf of the 6th Circuit court. “He has been hospitalized multiple times for psychiatric reasons ... (his) counsel has indicated that Lamarr responds well to medication when it is administered.”

Despite his mental issues and the potential for effective treatment, the three-judge appellate panel ruled there was sufficient evidence to convict Lamarr and his sentence was reasonable.

In his challenge to his sentence, Lamarr argued that the district court relied on “a clearly erroneous supposition” during sentencing, specifically, that he had engaged in violent behavior.

During sentencing, the district court rejected Lamarr’s request for a downward variance and stated, among other things, that it was imposing the 210-month sentence to protect the public.

“I have to weigh protecting the public with his mental history, and I simply don’t believe the public will be protected if this defendant does not receive a significant sentence, and frankly, you argue the mental history is the reason why I should vary downward, and yet, the mental history is probably why we are where we are at today, and it is because of that mental history that I need to protect the public,” the district judge stated.

Lamarr took issue with that statement and addressed the district court himself, asking the judge, “You need to protect the public from me? ... Have I ever harmed a member of the public physically?”

The district court replied, “You know what, sir? You can argue that on appeal.”

But the court of appeals sided with the lower court, finding that “one cannot reasonably extrapolate” that the district court’s “concern for public protection was based on a clearly erroneous perception that Lamarr had engaged in violent behavior.”

Clay wrote that the protection of the public is a reasonable factor for a sentencing court to take into consideration even if the defendant did not act violently.

“The district court did not insinuate that Lamarr was a violent person simply by emphasizing its concern for pubic protection in this case,” Clay wrote. “Rather, the explanation offered by the district court explicitly identified Lamarr’s lengthy criminal history, including numerous bank robberies, as the basis for its consideration.”

The court of appeals concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion and it affirmed Lamarr’s conviction and sentence. Judges Damon Keith and Jane Stranch concurred to make the ruling unanimous.

The verdict comes at a time when 45 percent of federal inmates are reported as having a mental health problem, according to a report released in March by the nonprofit Urban Institute.

The report indicates that the mentally ill are “overrepresented” in the criminal justice system and that programs such as the creation of mental health court dockets, multidisciplinary treatment approaches and the expansion of Medicaid — permitted by the Affordable Care Act to nearly all childless adults with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level — have all been shown to be effective in facilitating the reintegration of mentally ill prisoners into society.

The case is cited United States v. Lamarr, case No. 14-3722.

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