A string of bad choices ends in five life sentences

NORFOLK

Marqui Clardy's projected release date looks like a year from a science fiction novel: 2808.

His sentence of five life terms - one for each person he robbed - makes him one of a small fraternity of men sentenced to life in prison for robbery. Only seven people in Hampton Roads received such a severe sentence for robbery charges in 2007 and 2008, and the majority of them had seriously wounded their victims.

The judge who heard his trial cited a number of reasons for giving him a long sentence. Last year, Clardy used Craigslist.com, a site for classified ads, to lure his victims. He held a gun to their heads, cursed them, and robbed them of their items for sale. Clardy contacted the victims after the robberies and tried to keep them from coming to court.

"It still hasn't fully hit me," Clardy said in the Norfolk City Jail, where he awaits transfer to prison. "I keep telling myself something is going to happen."

Clardy, 25, grew up in Portsmouth around kids he figured would spend their lives in the streets. He said he knew early that he did not want that for himself. "I wanted to surround myself with positive people."

Clardy decided to join the Navy when he was 17. He served four years as a sailor, working as an information systems analyst. He married and had four children, later separating from his wife. About a year after he left the Navy, he enrolled at Old Dominion University to study computer science. He spent one semester there, according to a school spokeswoman, in the fall of 2006.

By May 2008, he said, he had money troubles. He owed money to credit companies and for court fines, owed money for rent, owed money for tuition - so much, he said, that the school refused to let him sign up for additional classes. " I didn't have the money to finish school," Clardy said. "I felt like I hit rock bottom. I hadn't been in debt like that ever."

He decided that the best way to get money fast was to rob people.

"I was just trying to take a shortcut," he said. "I thought it would just be easy money."

In a jail interview, the tall, slender, clean-cut man displayed a humble demeanor. His intelligence showed in his speech; he rarely stumbled.

Yet he had no explanation for why he resorted to robbery. Clardy acknowledged that he was not in danger because of his debts. His parents would have helped him had he asked. He had no prior convictions for any violent crimes.

"I didn't think about it rationally," he said.

Clardy acted on his idea while visiting Portsmouth. There, he met up with a friend from middle school. As they sat on the porch at Clardy's mother's house, Clardy told his friend he planned to rob somebody. Clardy said his friend offered to come along as security - he had a gun. Clardy set it up. He contacted a man who offered a video-game system for sale on Craigslist. He and his friend knew that Clardy's speech and appearance would make him seem trustworthy, so they agreed Clardy would meet with the seller.

That man was John Lester, who offered to sell his Xbox for $300. He agreed to meet Clardy at an apartment building near Old Dominion on May 24, 2008. Clardy and his friend held Lester at gunpoint. They cursed him and told him to lie face down or they would "blow his brains out," according to Lester's testimony during Clardy's trial.

Lester's wife and child waited in a car outside.

"I start praying out loud to God that I don't get killed," Lester testified.

Lester said that Clardy went through his pockets. He asked for cash. He took Lester's cell phone, pocket knife and wallet. And then, Clardy took the .40-caliber Glock that Lester carried on his waist, calling Lester a foul name as he did so.

"I realize both of them have a gun now, and I know mine's loaded," Lester testified.

"He was terrified," Clardy said in an interview. "He asked if we were going to kill him. I know he was scared for his life."

The next day, the pair robbed another Craigslist advertiser. Matthew Owens testified that Clardy held a gun within 3 inches of his head and that he and another man took his Xbox and games outside his office on Granby Street.

Clardy said he told his girlfriend about the robberies, and she asked him to stop.

"I told her it wasn't a lifestyle I was getting into," Clardy said. "I was just trying to use it as a stepping stone."

His final stepping stone was robbing three sailors at gunpoint in their apartment on Enfield Avenue on May 27, 2008. If his actions were not a "lifestyle," he had certainly become brazen: He sent his victims text messages after the robbery, threatening to return to terrorize them again if they failed to accede to his demands.

The set up was the same: Clardy contacted a Craiglist seller about buying a laptop computer. Once inside the man's apartment, he and his friend took that laptop, as well as the computers of the other men living there, and ransacked the place. They took money, movies, video-game systems and games.

They held guns within inches of their victims' heads and threatened to kill the men if they moved.

Later that day, one of the victims received a text message from Clardy's cell phone.

"I want that password by noon," it read. And then, hours later: "Answer the phone or I'm coming to your house."

Those messages would not be the last time Clardy reached out to his victims after the robberies. Before his trial, he wrote each of the victims a letter from jail.

"Please, I'm not attempting to coerce you in any kind of way," Clardy wrote. "I only want to apologize and ask your forgiveness for what I did to you, and to show you who I really am: a good person with good intentions in life, who made a bad decision."

Each letter was identical, and sent in an envelope bearing another inmate's name. The victims did not know the letter was from Clardy until they opened it.

Then, Clardy persuaded his girlfriend, a student at ODU, to try contact the victims. She called one of them using a stolen cell phone Clardy left in her room. Siobhan Browne testified that Clardy asked her to tell his victims that they were married and had children together, and to offer to return the phone. The purpose, Browne testified, was so the victims "would not come to court or decide on not coming to court."

Browne did not know that Clardy remained married, or that he had four children, Clardy testified.

At trial, Clardy instructed his lawyer, Kenneth Singleton, to prepare a defense that seemed shaky at best: that his friend had held him hostage at gunpoint for four days and forced him to commit the robberies. Prosecutor Asha Pandya asked each witness questions designed to show that Clardy was in control: He had not told police in the hours after his arrest that he was held hostage or coerced, had not complained to Browne that he had been held at gunpoint. Some victims said Clardy seemed to mock them.

"He kind of just laughed," testified Steven Lucas, describing how Clardy had ordered him and his friends to stay motionless on the floor. "He was like, 'You think I'm playing?' "

Judge Norman A. Thomas convicted Clardy and sentenced him in February.

Singleton argued that a 23-year sentence - the least Clardy could serve because of mandatory time for the gun convictions - was plenty of time for his client to learn his lesson. Clardy had no prior criminal record, Singleton said, and had served his country. He was in school, trying to better himself.

"Usually when you see people who get in this kind of trouble they don't go from zero to 100 like that," Singleton said. Clardy's actions after the robberies and even his defense, Singleton implied, had been his client's attempts to think his way out of the situation.

"I believe he just panicked," Singleton said. "I believe he saw that he would never be able to get through life."

Thomas had no sympathy. He had thought about the case frequently. The judge cited Clardy's use of Craigslist to lure victims, calling his actions a prostitution of their trust. He noted the location of the crimes, near a college campus and in the sailors' home.

"You rob them at gunpoint and call them filthy names and hold them down in their living rooms at gunpoint to their head and put them in fear of death in their own home," Thomas said. "That must be addressed."

Thomas sentenced Clardy to a term of life imprisonment for each robbery victim, with an additional 53 years for gun and conspiracy charges.

Had he pleaded guilty, Clardy might have served as little as 13 years. That's what the prosecutor mentioned in plea discussions, Singleton said.

"After I heard the sentence, I kind of blanked," Clardy said.

His mother, Dianna Clardy, said she struggles to reconcile her son, the boy who won awards in elementary school and dreamed of being a video-game designer, with the man who probably will die in prison.

"He was the best kid anybody could have asked for," she said. "I don't want to call my son stupid, but I don't know what he was thinking."

Clardy initially appealed, but dropped it. He said appeals are "for people who think they're innocent and want to find some way around the law."

He says he's written legislators to protest his sentence.

The lawyer who was appointed to represent him on appeal, Daymen W.X. Robinson, said he talked to his client about the finality of ending his appeal and warned him that the decision was irreversible.

"I can absolutely say it's probably the most unusual decision as far as appeals go that I've seen," Robinson said.

Clardy's mother was shocked to hear that he had dropped his appeal. She found herself again wondering what he was thinking.

"He has given his life away," she said.

Michelle Washington, (757)446-2287, michelle.washington@pilotonline.com