Sagging pants may be part of the reason a Laurel man will be wearing prison pants for the next couple of decades. Jaquarus White, 21, was wearing the same boxer shorts when he held up a North Laurel convenience store as he had on when he was in the store earlier that same day, prosecutor Katie Sumrall pointed out to the jury. Even though he had changed pants and shirts, the underwear was visible in video surveillance footage from the Clarks on North 16th Avenue, just inside the city limits.
“The first time … you see his boxer shorts,” Sumrall said in her closing argument, “and when the masked man came in later, when he leans over, you see the exact same boxer shorts.”
White’s attorney Cruz Gray didn’t rebut the claim about his client’s underwear, but he did object to Sumrall calling attention to it in her closing after it wasn’t mentioned while evidence was being presented, and he later called for a mistrial.
Jones County Circuit Court Judge Dal Williamson denied both.
Minutes into their deliberation, jurors asked to view the two videos again, and they did. The jury — made up of six white women, four white men and two black women — deliberated for 1 hour and 20 minutes before finding White guilty of armed robbery.
Williamson sentenced White to serve 30 years in the full-time custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
“In a civilized society, you can’t point a gun at someone and make them think they’re about to die,” the judge said, “and there has to be a severe penalty for that sort of thing.” White was a regular customer at the store he robbed, clerk Justin Huddleston and manager LaRhonda Page testified, saying that they recognized him and several other regular customers recognized him from the surveillance video.
Officer Justin Clifton and Lt. John Stringer of the Laurel Police Department responded to the robbery that was reported around 3 a.m. on Oct. 16, 2020, and they also testified. A white Toyota Camry that was parked on the side of the building had a license plate that was registered to White.
The jury also saw part of a video of White being interviewed by Investigator Seth Crabtree after he was arrested for the armed robbery of the Alliance convenience store at the other end of 16th Avenue. In that interview, he’s heard correcting Crabtree, saying “that was at Clark’s,” in response to a question about the Alliance robbery.
The jury also asked to watch that video again during the deliberation.
In his closing argument, Gray told jurors that the police stopped the investigation after they were told that White was the gunman.
“The identification was provided to law enforcement, and they had reached the finish line, in their mind,” he said.
Sumrall emphasized that the witnesses had “no question” that the tall, slender gunman in the video was the defendant. She also noted that when he is seen in surveillance video coming in the store earlier and in the robbery, he opens the door with his left hand each time, he’s holding the gun in his left had when he’s threatening Huddleston and he signs paperwork with his left hand when he’s being interviewed by Crabtree.
“He always uses his left hand, and there are not that many left-handed people in the world,” she said.
White was arrested at nearby Shadowood Apartments on Old Amy Drive a couple of weeks after the Clark’s robbery.
Williamson immediately went into the sentencing phase of the trial after thanking the jurors for their time. Assistant District Attorney Sumrall said that the defendant had no prior felony convictions on his record. Before the trial, she told the judge that the state was not seeking the maximum penalty of life in prison.
After White is released, he was ordered to serve three years on MDOC post-release supervision, but he is still facing trial for the armed robbery of the Alliance.
“It’s a sad thing when a young person throws a big part of his life away,” Williamson said, “but this was a calculated armed robbery …”
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