Once charged with murder, this Meridian man was sentenced for a drug felony. Why?
.jpg "A Meridian man originally charged with second-degree murder received a retained jurisdiction sentence on a drug charge.")
A Meridian man originally charged with second-degree murder in 2022 was sentenced to at least seven years in prison — after pleading guilty to a drug felony. But because a judge gave him a retained jurisdiction sentence, he may be released from prison sooner depending on his success in rehabilitation programming.
Canyon County prosecutors had accused DeVin Alapati Jones, 26, of aiding and abetting someone to commit murder for his alleged involvement in a shooting death. After a plea deal, prosecutors replaced that charge with possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver.
”This is a rather peculiar case,” public defender Michael Florian said at the sentencing hearing. “What started out as murder two or aide and abet murder two has resolved with this possession with intent to deliver fentanyl charge, which is what it I think should have been from the get-go. This is a drug case, not a murder case.”
On Feb. 28, 2022, paramedics responded to a home in the 3800 block of Garrity Boulevard in Nampa and found Gerardo Quintero dead, according to previous Idaho Statesman reporting. Quintero, 39, of Ontario, Oregon, had gone into an apartment that belonged to an acquaintance of Alapati Jones and Pedro Archuleta, the other man charged in the killing, Florian said. The woman who lived there had asked Quintero to retrieve a phone that she believed the other men had stolen, but police later found the phone on her bed, Florian told the court.
She told Quintero that one of the men had a gun, Florian said, so Quintero “made the choice to go into the apartment with his gun drawn to two people he had never met and demanded to them to hand over a phone that they did not steal.”
Archuleta was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to a charge of unlawful possession of a weapon by a felon. Under his plea deal, his second-degree murder charge was dismissed.
Alapati Jones was on the bed when Quintero entered the unit, but then fled to the kitchen after hearing shots, Florian said.
“I don’t think there’s any evidence to point to the fact that Mr. Alapati Jones is guilty of the murder charge,” he said, but he conceded that his client had fentanyl and intended to deliver it.
“He is an addict, he knows it and he knows that he needs help,” Florian added. He asked 3rd District Judge Andrea Courtney for a retained jurisdiction, or rider sentence, with two years fixed and five indeterminate.
Prosecutor Matt Dyal requested a retained jurisdiction as well, but asked for a sentence of seven years fixed and 13 indeterminate to motivate Alapati Jones to behave. He did not discuss the circumstances of the killing in his argument.
Courtney sentenced Alapati Jones to seven years fixed and 10 indeterminate. She said she would retain jurisdiction for up to a year and reassess his case based on his participation in the rider program. That means he could be released from prison early.
“Mr. Alapati Jones, this will be the singular opportunity to continue to demonstrate that you want something better for yourself and for others, that you want to shed the effects of a drug addiction and that you wish to be out in the community,” the judge told him.
Alapati Jones spoke in court and said he was grateful for his arrest. “Being arrested is one of the biggest blessings that ever happened to me,” he said, “because with it came my sobriety, something I could not have accomplished on my own.”
