Crime

Melvin Brown Jr., no stranger to prison, faces life behind bars when a judge sentences him to life in prison in the wake of Tuesday's guilty verdict in the shooting death of Jeremy Markley (shown here in the inset photo) whose body was found slumped in an SUV behind an Edgewater bar following a high speed chase through the streets of New Smyrna Beach.

NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- In just two hours of deliberations today, a jury found Melvin Brown Jr. guilty of first-degree murder in the shotgun slaying of fellow New Smyrna Beach resident Jeremy Markley on July 19, 2009, following a high speed chase with gunfire spraying the lead vehicle.

The jury's swift action paves the way for presiding Circuit Judge Randall Rowe to "adjudicate" Brown a convict and sentence him at a later date to life behind bars. Markley's life was cut shot by Brown's gunfire on of all nights, his 25th birthday.

Brown, having already been in prison for drug trafficking and now 34, is still a young man.

A ruling by Circuit Judge William Parsons, chief judge of the 7th judicial circuit, denied condemned death row murderer Jerone Hunter, shown here, a chance at having his death sentences set aside for his role in the 2004 Deltona Xbox murders of six people in a Telford Lane home, the largest mass murder case in Volusia County's history.

DAYTONA BEACH -- Mass murderer Jerone Hunter is not getting off Florida's death row anytime soon, if ever, after a circuit judge's ruling Wednesday that he failed to prove ineffective assistance of counsel at his capital murder trial six years ago.