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Montgomery Advertiser WETUMPKA -- A local man is scheduled to be sentenced this afternoon for the 2003 murder of a prominent Elmore County businessman. In October, Jason Murphy, 28, was convicted of felony murder in the shooting death of Ronnie Holman, a construction company owner who was gunned down in the front yard of his Titus home the night of July 29, 2003. Circuit Judge Sibley Reynolds will hand down the sentence in Elmore County Circuit Court at 3 p.m., courthouse records show. The Alabama attorney general's office handled the prosecution of the case and will be seeking the maximum sentence of 99 years in prison, said Joy Patterson, a spokeswoman for the office. Murphy originally was charged with capital murder because prosecutors alleged the murder was committed during the commission of a robbery. A Chilton County jury found him guilty of the lesser charge of felony murder during his third trial. Reynolds moved the trial to Clanton because he ruled that pretrial publicity made it difficult to seat an impartial jury in Elmore County. The juries could not agree on a verdict in Murphy's first two trials. Murphy and his younger brother, Jared, were arrested July 30, 2003. Jared Murphy also was indicted on capital murder charges and has been in jail since his arrest. His trial is set to begin Aug. 16 in Clanton, courthouse records show. Jared Murphy was 17 at the time of the crime, so he can't face the death penalty if convicted of capital murder. |
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