Joshua Ryan Martin, 20, and Kevin David Hass,21, pleaded guilty to armed robbery charges on March 26 and are facing five to 20 years of jail time.
Martin and Hass, residents of Cement City and Jerome, Mich. respectively, admitted to robbing Buddy’s Mini-Mart in Jerome in April 2011. Hillsdale County Circuit Court Prosecutor Neal Brady said they also admitted to numerous accounts of breaking and entering to both businesses and homes in Hillsdale County.
“It was open and shut,” Brady said. “They admitted to what they did. There was video from the store, they fit the description, [and] the stolen property was found in a storage unit as well as the guns they had used in the armed robbery.”
Martin and Hass were taken into custody almost a year ago when they were discovered on security tapes. It took almost a year to sentence the pair due to requests for psychological competency tests and a new lawyer hired by Martin, Brady said. A competency test is performed by a third party and determines whether or not the accused is capable of standing trial.
“We waited at least three months before we the forensics examination had determined them to be competent,” Brady said. “They were clever. They knew what they were doing.”
Brady agreed to drop the other minor charges facing Martin and Hass if they pled guilty to the armed robbery and paid restitutions for the other stolen property.
Although armed robbery is not an everyday occurrence in Hillsdale County, Brady said it happens more often than people might think.
“Well [armed robbery] is reported every time it happens. Does it happen often? I would say maybe once every two years,” Brady said. “Buddy’s Mini-Mart in Jerome has been robbed a couple times now.”
