A little more than two years after the murder of Australian baseball player Christopher Lane in Duncan, the fourth and final defendant in his killing isconvicted of his role in the random shooting.
James Francis "Bug" Edwards, now 18, was only 15 years old when he got in a car with his friends Michael Dewayne Jones, then 17, and Chancey Allen Luna,then 16. The trio went riding through the streets of Duncan when Luna and Jones decided to shoot someone. Jones, who was driving the vehicle, swervedtoward jogger Christopher Lane, and Luna fired, striking Lane in the back, fatally injuring him.
Shortly after the assault, Jones allegedly told authorities that the three were "bored" and just decided to kill someone, giving rise to the term "thrillkilling" to describe the murder of the East Central University baseball player. However, the teens would later claim that they thought the gun containedblanks, and they only intended to scare the jogger.
Charges against Edwards, the youngest of the three, were later reduced from first degree murder to accessory after the fact, when he agreed to testify.Prosecutors said that Edwards did not know that the teen knew what his friends were planning. Edwards said he was "rolling a joint" and did not realizewhat Luna and Jones were doing until after Jones swerved toward Lane and Luna shot him.
However, because he called a friend from jail and asked him to hide the weapon used in the killing, he was charged as an accessory after the fact.
On Wednesday, Edwards pleaded guilty to the charge, which carries a maximum sentence of 45 years in prison. However, in doing so, he rejected a negotiatedsentence that would send him to prison for 20 years and place him on probation for an additional 20 years. He will spend a year in a prison boot campin Alva, and at sentencing, a judge will determine how much longer he must remain incarcerated after completing the boot camp.
Also convicted and sentenced in the case are Luna and Jones, each convicted of first degree murder, and Oddessee John David Barnes, now 23, who was convictedof being an accessory after the fact after he admitted to taking the gun from Luna and discarding it in "tall grass" near an apartment complex. Theweapon has never been recovered.
Luna, the shooter, is sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Jones, the driver, is sentenced to life.
Barnes is serving a 12-year sentence.
