RACINE, Wis. – After nine years, prosecutors agreed this week to finally to drop the robbery charges in the December 2000 heist at Belle City CU against the now-53-year-old defendant.
In the interim, Ricky McMorris served a three-and-a-half year jail term for a weapons charge while he was awaiting trial for the robbery, according to prosecutors.
McMorris was sentenced Monday in state court to three years probation for fleeing police and bail jumping, charges he earned in October 2005, while he was out on bond for the 2000 armed robbery of a credit union.
A jury had earlier convicted him of being a felon in possession of a firearm. He was waiting to be sentenced for that when he was arrested in October 2005, for allegedly soliciting sex from an undercover officer. McMorris served three-and-a-half years in prison for the gun charge while the charges for armed robbery, bail jumping, pandering and fleeing police stayed open.
His first trial ended in a mistrial after his brother, who McMorris claimed robbed the credit union, invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself during testimony. A second trial ended in a hung jury on the armed robbery charge and McMorris was convicted of the weapons charge.
Throughout the legal ordeal, McMorris went through six court-appointed lawyers, either because they have withdrawn from the case or he has fired them.
