Inmate rejects deal, pleads guilty to gun-smuggling try at Brevard jail

from floridatoday.com:

"SHARPES -- A Brevard County Detention Center inmate rejected a plea deal today that would have tacked 10 years onto a 30-year sentence he’s already serving for attempted murder.

Instead of taking the plea bargain on six pending felony cases, Phillip McCullough, 24, pleaded guilty to attempting to smuggle a gun into the jail last year.

Circuit Judge Jack Griesbaum sentenced the 24-year-old to the maximum five years in prison allowed for that charge. That time was tacked onto the sentence he’s already serving on the attempted murder conviction.

McCullough now faces trial on five pending cases.

The deal prosecutors offered today would have allowed McCullough to serve a 40-year sentence on all his pending cases at the same time as the 30-year sentence he’s already serving.

Prosecutors said McCullough also is suspected -- but has not been charged -- in four homicides, some of which could carry a potential life sentence.

The deal offered today would have capped potential charges in those cases at second-degree murder and resulted in no additional prison time had McCullough cooperated with authorities’ investigations into those cases.


In November 2008, while awaiting prosecution on the 2007 case, sheriff’s deputies said McCullough, Heyne and another man helped hold down a jail inmate while he was sexually assaulted by a fifth man.

Then in August, Brevard County sheriff’s investigators said a corrections officer at the Sharpes jail was screening mail when he discovered a .38-caliber, two-shot derringer hidden inside a large stack of legal documents. The documents were hollowed out to accommodate the gun.

Investigators said McCullough and Heyne admitted to an escape plot — among other schemes — and said the plan involved Heyne taking McCullough as his hostage as part of the plot. Heyne then would have wounded McCullough to give the appearance he was not involved, officials said.

Heyne was sentenced in December to death row following a conviction in the 2006 slayings of his roommates and their 5-year-old daughter.

Investigators said Lamont Lewis of Mims and McCullough’s wife, Arneshewa McCullough, arranged for the purchase of the weapon, along with two rounds of ammunition, and removed the gun’s serial numbers to try to prevent it from being traced.

Lewis was sentenced in October to four years of probation under a plea deal that requires him to testify against his co-defendants.

Charges against Arneshewa McCullough and Heyne are pending."