2 GET LIFE SENTENCES FOR EXECUTION-STYLE KILLINGS

Victims In Triple Slaying, Killed In Feud Over Drugs, Were Shot At Least 6
Times

Two men convicted of three execution-style slayings that demonstrated the
high-stakes climate of the city's narcotics trade were sentenced Monday to
life in prison without eligibility for parole.

Dion Matthews, who boasted in a presentence report that he made $3,000 a
week peddling drugs, and Robert Lee Williams, who masterminded the triple
slaying just one month after being paroled from prison, were sentenced in a
courtroom packed with the relatives of the victims, who each were shot six
or more times as they lay facedown on a floor.

"I don't think that when you execute three men without any real reason you
should ever get out of prison," Assistant District Attorney Mark S.
Williams said in recommending the term for Matthews, who was sentenced
first by Circuit Judge Jeffrey A. Wagner.

"Certainly you showed no mercy toward those young men, and the court will
show you no mercy," Wagner told Matthews.

Robert Lee Williams got his life sentence even though he pleaded guilty
without a plea bargain on the table and volunteered to become a prosecution
witness.

"He did do those things, and perhaps they will lighten his soul, but they
should not lighten his sentence," the prosecutor said of Robert Lee Williams.

And while the two shooters got the state's toughest sentence, the getaway
driver benefited from a plea bargain that the prosecutor termed an "ugly"
but "necessary" means of ensuring that killers responsible for particularly
ruthless shootings go to prison.

"The state had to pick someone to give consideration," Williams said of
Robert Johnson, who received an eight-year prison term after having two of
the three murder charges he faced dropped in exchange for his testimony.

Wagner sentenced the three men for their roles in a bloodbath that veterans
in the criminal justice system regard as another sign of how little life is
valued by some in today's illegal drug business.

The victims, Brandon West, 15, Kelvin Haslett, 22, and Joe Hudson, 37, were
found March 3 in a home in the 2600 block of N. 4th St. Circuit Court
records say that Haslett and Hudson were involved in cocaine and marijuana
dealing in the home, and West merely stopped by to visit one of the two men.

Haslett and Hudson were shot six times each, and West was shot 12 times.

"They shoot them again and again and again," prosecutor Williams said in
court Monday. "You wonder what Brandon West, a 15-year-old boy, was
thinking about . . . being in the wrong place at the wrong time like he was."

Williams and Matthews, who knew each other just one week before the
slayings, were charged with being the shooters while Johnson waited outside
in a car. But Matthews, formerly of the 4300 block of N. 25th St., claimed
that Williams had done all the shooting, while Williams said he shot only West.

The robbers fled with one-half pound of marijuana and $1,200, leaving their
victims dead in the living room amid 29 bullet casings.

Police got the lead that broke open the case this summer from a prison
inmate, and the three men were charged Aug. 11.

Mark Williams explained that while Robert Lee Williams was imprisoned in
1999 he had been laying plans for the robbery and, if necessary, murder of
Haslett, soliciting help from other inmates while plotting his next step in
a long feud.

Robert Williams and Matthews each were sentenced on three counts of
first-degree intentional homicide while armed and three counts of armed
robbery and actually received three consecutive life terms without
eligibility for extended supervision, the replacement for parole under
truth-in-sentencing.

While Williams pleaded guilty last month, Matthews, 25, took his case to
trial and was found guilty as charged.