‘It won’t fix this.’ Man gets 10 years in unprovoked killing of Lexington 16-year-old
An attorney asked a judge to consider an 18-year-old’s good behavior and cooperation with police, but the maximum recommended sentence was imposed Tuesday in the 2017 shooting death of a 16-year-old.
Raymond Smead was sentenced to 17 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to reduced charges in the fatal shooting and a separate robbery. He was one of three juveniles accused in the 2017 killing of 16-year-old Floyd Dunn III near the corner of East Sixth and Chestnut streets.
Smead, who was 16 at the time of the shooting, was charged with murder. His case went to trial in October.
During the trial, Smead pleaded guilty to an amended charge of second-degree manslaughter. Smead’s co-defendants, Dontaevius Bowie and Herbie Booker, had previously pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter in the case. Bowie and Booker were also juveniles at the time of the shooting.
Prosecutors recommended that Smead be sentenced to ten years in the shooting, while Bowie and Booker each faced five-year sentences.
Smead pleaded guilty to two counts of of facilitation of robbery in March that were unrelated to the shooting. It was recommended that he serve a total of seven years in that case.
In both the robberies and shooting, Smead’s attorneys believe he was “much more of a teenage complicitor who made bad decisions,” than the person who planned to commit the crimes, said Erica Roland, Smead’s attorney.
“In the case of Floyd Dunn, I don’t know that it was anyone’s idea for that to happen,” Roland said Thursday. “It’s a tragic event that should never have happened and (Smead) takes responsibility for his part in it.”
Before Fayette Circuit Court Judge Kimberly Bunnell determined sentencing, Roland told her that Smead’s attorneys maintained that he was not the one who pulled the trigger the night that Floyd died. Roland asked that Bunnell run the sentences for the shooting and the robberies concurrently for a total of 10 years.
“A 17-year sentence means that you will be sentencing Raymond to more time than he was alive when the events happened,” Roland said.
Smead wanted his attorneys to ask for probation instead of jail time, but Roland told Bunnell that she understood that was unlikely given the charges. Still, she asked for the judge to consider Smead’s behavior since being arrested and cooperation with investigators when determining the sentence.
Bunnell told Smead Thursday that she was happy that he’d done well in the time since his arrest, but that probation would not work given the severity of the crimes.
Ultimately, Bunnell decided to run the sentences consecutively. Smead will get credit for any time he served while awaiting his trial.
Both of Smead’s cases involved guns, and Bunnell said Tuesday that crimes involving guns have been “damaging to our society.” She told him that she hopes he will learn from everything that has happened and “put the guns down.”
“Nothing I can do to you, as severe as I can possibly be, it won’t fix this,” Bunnell said. “I am not naive enough to think that the more time I give you is going to be more time for you to rehabilitate in prison.”
Floyd was killed after he and a group of friends walked from a block party in Lexington’s East End to buy drinks at a nearby store. He was standing outside the market when shots were fired into his group. Both prosecutors and Smead’s attorneys said during the brief October trial that Floyd and his group of friends had done nothing wrong and had not provoked the shooting.
After his arrest, Smead gave information to police about calibers of guns involved in the cases and the placement of individuals that matched evidence, Roland said.
“We have issues in our community where people won’t talk to the police, where people don’t make statements, where people don’t talk about co-defendants’ names and things like that,” Roland said. “In this particular circumstance, Mr. Smead was arrested in January of 2018, he gave a lengthy statement to police naming and detailing the involvement of two different sets of co-defendants.”
During Smead’s trial, Roland argued that Bowie and Booker had been the ones to fire at the group of kids, and that Smead had run away when shots were fired.
Prosecutors argued that Smead had sent a Facebook message on the day of the shooting in which he asked for a gun to commit a robbery.
“If we could ever figure out a way to encourage the citizens to become more active, more forthcoming, maybe we would actually know what happened. And that’s in so many cases, it’s just tragic,” Bunnell said Tuesday. “And instead, we are left with still speculation in this case.”
After Tuesday’s hearing, Smead was remanded into custody to serve his sentence.
