McKinney sentenced to 7 years in shooting

The defendant is already serving two consecutive life prison terms for the murders.

staff report

YOUNGSTOWN — A double murderer has been sentenced to seven years in prison after being charged with shooting at 14 police officers on Youngstown’s North Side, and that time will run concurrently with his life prison terms for killing two people.

Judge John M. Durkin of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court sentenced Jermaine McKinney to the seven-year term on Monday after McKinney entered an Alford plea to seven counts of felonious assault in the Jan. 1, 2006, incident at a Halleck Street residence, where police arrested McKinney following a four-hour standoff.

An Alford plea means he didn’t admit committing the crimes, but he conceded the prosecution had enough evidence to convict him.

The indictment originally contained 14 felonious assault counts, one for each of the 13 city police officers and the one Liberty police officer he allegedly shot at, with firearm specifications to all counts.

Had he been convicted of all counts and gun specifications, McKinney, 29, of Youngstown, could have been sentenced to up to 143 years in prison for the standoff with police.

However, in a plea agreement, the prosecution dropped seven of the felonious assault counts and all 14 gun specifications before McKinney entered his Alford plea to the remaining counts and the judge found him guilty of them.

After a jury convicted McKin-ney in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court, Judge Wyatt W. McKay sentenced him on Nov. 29, 2006, to two consecutive life prison terms without parole eligibility for the murders of Wanda Rollyson, 70, and her daughter, Rebecca Cliburn, 45, in Rollyson’s Newton Township home on Dec. 21, 2005.

The sentence in Judge Durkin’s court for the standoff is nonappealable because it was agreed to by the prosecution and defense and adopted by the judge. There were no injuries in the standoff.