Man avoids stiffer sentence on conviction of carjacking, robbery charges

A Fort Myers man was convicted late Tuesday of carjacking a Bonita Springs man and robbing another man who was visiting the home, but won’t face a stiffer prison sentence after a jury decided against convicting him of harsher crimes.

Montrell D. Green, 33, was accused of committing a string of seven car-jacking robberies in Bonita Springs and Fort Myers in March 2004. He was charged with one count each of robbery with a deadly weapon, carjacking with a deadly weapon, kidnapping, and home invasion/robbery with a deadly weapon.

Jurors convicted him of robbery with a weapon, robbery, kidnapping and home invasion/robbery Tuesday night after his one-day jury trial in Lee County Circuit Court.

“They didn’t think the BB gun was a gun,” Aaron J. O’Brien, Green’s defense attorney, said after the verdict. “The offer to plead guilty (to 40 years in prison) was the functional equivalent of a life sentence. We have said from Day One there were no firearms. I believe they overcharged him.”

Under the state’s 10-20-life law, using a firearm to commit a crime triggers a mandatory 10-year prison term.

“We’re satisfied and think they (jurors) were truly trying to find justice,” O’Brien said.

Green and two co-defendants were charged after investigators said the trio committed a string of carjacking robberies, featuring some victims who were hog-tied with electrical and telephone cords found inside their homes. Green’s trial was in connection with such a robbery on March 26, when two men at 23680 Walden Center Drive, Bonita Springs, reported they were hog-tied with these cords after one man was car-jacked, driven to an ATM and robbed.

Fort Lauderdale resident Allen Fraser, 32, testified he had just arrived at his mother and her boyfriend’s Pelican Landing apartment when the boyfriend, Alex Lacatus, 45, walked in with two men holding him at gun and knifepoint.

“I was hit in my stomach, my kidneys, my face, several time,” Fraser testified. “I was asking questions and the more questions I asked, the worse it got.”

He later was hospitalized, he said.

“I thought when they leave, they’ll shoot us in the back of the head,” Fraser said, adding that only one of the men was wearing pantyhose over his head and face. “I thought it was my last day on earth.”

His mother, a nurse, was working that night, he said.

Green’s co-defendant Victor Rodriguez, 21, of Fort Myers, signed a plea deal in November 2005. In exchange for testifying against Green and another co-defendant — Fabian Melton, 25, of Norfolk — Rodriguez will spend 25 years in prison. Melton is scheduled to go to trial in another case today.

The robberies started March 15, 2004, at the Brittany Apartments. Attacks also were reported March 17 and March 22 in Fort Myers.

Green was convicted by a judge in November 2005 on charges of robbery, car-jacking, kidnapping and robbery with a weapon in the March 28, 2004, attack on a Bonita Springs man at 28100 Dovewood Court.

After jurors left the courtroom to deliberate, Lee County Circuit Judge Thomas S. Reese demanded that Green remove the sheet of paper containing jurors’ names that he was spotted shoving in his pants’ pocket. Because it didn’t include jurors’ addresses, Reese said, he could have it back.