Man pleads guilty in 2012 homicide

August 19, 2014 at 12:00a.m.

YOUNGSTOWN

Prosecutors are recommending a sentence of 17 years for a man who admitted a 2012 slaying on the East Side.

Jamel Smith, 21, of Kimmel Street, entered guilty pleas Monday before Judge Maureen Sweeney in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court to charges of voluntary manslaughter, being a felon in possession of a firearm and a firearm specification in the Nov. 20, 2012, shooting death of 28-year-old Oneil Williams in the back bedroom of a home on Atkinson Avenue.

In exchange for the plea, prosecutors amended the original charge of murder to voluntary manslaughter and recommend the maximum sentence for that charge, which is 11 years; a three-year sentence on the firearm charge and a three-year sentence on the firearm specification for a total of 17 years.

Jury selection in his case was to begin Monday.

Smith also pleaded guilty to a charge of felonious assault and a firearm specification in a separate incident in 2011. Prosecutors are recommending a sentence of six years in that case, to run concurrent to the sentence in the 2012 case.

Smith’s attorney for the voluntary manslaughter case, John Juhasz, said his client agreed to the plea because if a jury did not believe his story at trial, he would be facing a significantly higher sentence.

Police said Williams was killed because of an argument over a woman and was from the Detroit area.

Jury selection did get underway for another murder trial Monday, that of 29-year-old Janero Mitchell of Crandall Avenue. He is accused of the October 2012 shooting death of 57-year-old Mark Haskins, who was found dead with several gunshot wounds in front of a house at the corner of Bissell and Kennsington avenues on the North Side. Witnesses told police someone got out of a vehicle that was driving by the house, fired several shots and left.

Mitchell has faced charges in a homicide before. He pleaded guilty in 2006 to reckless homicide for a 2005 case and was sentenced to four years in prison.

Those charges came in June 2005, when Mitchell was 19, in the shooting death of 39-year-old Anthony McBride.

McBride, described as homeless, was found shot to death on the sidewalk between 810 and 840 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Youngstown.