JONESVILLE, N.C. (AP) - An appeals court has overturned the convictions of a man accused of being the getaway driver in an alleged robbery attempt that led to the slaying of a police officer nearly 25 years ago.
The North Carolina Court of Appeals cited prosecutorial errors in dismissing Marc Peterson Oldroyd’s convictions of second-degree murder, attempted armed robbery and conspiracy to commit armed robbery in the October 1996 shooting of Jonesville Police Sgt. Gregory Keith Martin.
Oldroyd pleaded guilty in 2014 in exchange for a 12-year sentence, The Winston-Salem Journal reported. But the court ruled 2-1 on Tuesday that because the indictment cited “Huddle House employees” and didn’t identify by name any individual victims of the alleged robbery attempt, that charge would have to be dropped, along with all of the related counts.
Prosecutors said Oldroyd was in a getaway car, waiting near a Jonesville restaurant that he and two co-conspirators planned to rob. Scott Vincent Sica and Brian Eugene Whittaker fled in another car when they found the back of the restaurant was locked.
When Martin stopped Sica and Whittaker on an interstate, Sica shot the officer multiple times in the head, according to a 2012 FBI statement announcing Sica’s arrest. Oldroyd twice drove by the murder scene, the appellate court noted.
Sica was sentenced to life for first-degree murder in 2014 and later died in prison. Whittaker got 17 years on the charges Oldroyd faced, the newspaper said.
Yadkin County District Attorney Tom Horner said his office plans to ask the state attorney general to appeal the case to the state Supreme Court. Attorney Emily Holmes Davis, representing Oldroyd, declined to comment to the paper.
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