Two Murder Convictions in Brinks Heist Case
Posted: Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Oakland, CA—Two men have been convicted of various charges after robbing a Brinks armored truck and killing its guard in 2006.
Clifton Wherry, 31, who was employed by Brinks as a truck driver, is said to have masterminded the heist, which also involved Dwight Campbell, 26, and William Stallings. In his closing statement, Prosecutor Mark Jackson called Wherry the brains of the operation, and Campbell the muscle.
During the robbery, which netted $1.2 million in cash, the driver of the truck, Anthony Quintero, was shot and killed. Initially, Campbell claimed that his gun went off by accident when Wherry suddenly stopped the truck.
According to Brinks procedure, the driver of any armored truck who is accosted by an armed man is supposed to sound an alarm, but Wherry did not do that. Prosecutors alleged that this act was intentional, and that the driver furthermore gave his dispatcher inaccurate information about the robbery’s location, in order to give the other men adequate time to escape.
Wherry’s lawyer, Tony Serra, admitted that Wherry failed to sound the alarm, but claimed that he had been “petrified with fear” during the robbery. He also accused prosecutors of having cut a deal with Stallings, allowing him to evade a murder charge after he returned most of the stolen cash. Prosecutor Jackson denied any knowledge of a deal with Stallings, and said the case against him is pending.
Wherry and Campbell were both convicted of first-degree murder, as well as of the special circumstance of committing a murder during the course of a robbery. They could face life in prison, with no possibility of parole. Both men are scheduled to be sentenced on December 11.
The jury, which was composed of eight women and four men, deliberated for two days before handing down the verdicts in the case. Relatives and friends of Quintero, a former Marine who was 24 at the time of his death, were in the courtroom to hear the jury’s decision, and many of them cried.
Stallings and Campbell were also former Marines, who had served together in Iraq. Campbell, who had had difficulty finding work after being honorably discharged from the military, was allegedly lured into the robbery scheme by Stallings, and that he believed he would only be required to transport some money.
Describing Wherry, attorney Serra said that he not only did not know that a robbery would occur, but that he was “almost like a choir boy.”
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