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Man pleads no contest in 2010 murder
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
A man accused in the 2010 killing of a Gulf War veteran pleaded no contest Wednesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court to a reduced charge of involuntary manslaughter.
Judge Maureen Sweeney found Frankie “Tank” Hudson, 24, of Falls Avenue, guilty of that charge and also charges of aggravated robbery and being a felon in possession of a firearm for the Dec. 14, 2010, killing of Christopher Weston, 44, in an Overland Avenue store.
Defense attorney David Betras and Assistant Prosecutor Nick Brevetta agreed on a 15-year sentence to run concurrent to sentences Hudson is serving for being a member of a South Side gang. Judge Sweeney upheld the sentencing recommendation.
The sentence will give Hudson an additional three years in prison, but as part of the plea, prosecutors agreed to not oppose a request for judicial release as long as Hudson behaves himself in prison.
The plea caps a case that seemingly had grown cold before Hudson first was indicted in Weston’s death in 2013. That indictment was withdrawn because Hudson was a juvenile when the crime was committed, then refiled in 2015.
Weston, a father of two boys and a Navy veteran of the Persian Gulf War whose wife and mother of the boys had died earlier in 2010, was filling in for a friend at the store when he was shot and killed.
Brevetta said he agreed to amend the aggravated murder charge to involuntary manslaughter because of Hudson’s “mental state” during the crime, but he would not comment further after court.
Betras is appealing the decision to re-indict Hudson but said the prosecution’s case was not very strong, especially because it had three different theories of the crime over the years.
“It would have offered them insurmountable problems at trial,” Betras said.
Brevetta said that prosecutors explained the deal to Weston’s family Tuesday, and the family approved. They did not come to court.
In brief remarks, Hudson said he wants to get his GED in prison and he asked the judge to be fair with him.
Hudson, along with four others, were given prison terms for their roles in 2014 for their roles as members of the “H Block” gang in the Hilton Avenue area of the South Side.
A jury also found Hudson not guilty in a trial in June of 2015 for the slaying of 17-year-old Josh Davis in September of 2011 during a robbery of marijuana on Davis’ front porch.
Jury selection in the Weston homicide case was halted in August 2016 because of a dispute over a witness.