A father and son, who tried to re-create a long-vanished family bond by starting a life of crime together are now on their way to prison – likely to never see each other again.
On Thursday, United States District Judge William S. Duffey, Jr. sentenced the father Clifford Durham, 39, to 50 years and eight months in prison for his role in a string of robberies, including an April 2011 bank robbery.
The son, Deangelo Jackson, who testified Wednesday at his sentencing that he participated in the robbery to gain the approval of his long absent father, was sentenced to 16 years and two months in federal prison for his role in a violent, but bungled bank robbery. Duffey said he would recommend that Jackson be placed in a prison close to Atlanta, but did not make the same concession for the father.
They were charged with armed attempted bank robbery, armed commercial robbery, and using and carrying firearms during crimes of violence.
“The true tragedy is that [Durham] caused his son to follow his criminal path and now has to spend his adult life in prison,” Duffey said.
A lifelong felon, Durham had recently done eight years in prison for possession of a firearm. Two years were added to that when prison guards caught him with smuggled items.
That was the father figure that Jackson saw when Durham was released from prison in 2007.
Given a chance to speak, Jackson said he longed for Durham’s approval and withered without it. He claimed that he only participated in the bank robbery after being asked three times.
“I wanted him to accept me as a son,” said Jackson, 23. “I turned him down twice and he started to fade away from me. He stopped answering my text messages and phone calls. One day, I was like, I would do it.”
On April 15, 2011, Durham, Jackson and two others — Rashad Marquiz Rogers and Mark Anthony Zanders II — allegedly set out to rob the Wells Fargo on Clairmont Road near I-85 in DeKalb County. Three of the men went in while Durham waited outside as the getaway driver.
But the bank job proved problematic. The bank was full. Bank officials refused to open the safe. The three panicked and fled. It was the middle of the day and they ran into traffic. When stopped by police, a gun went off.
No one was hurt, but they all escaped, only to be captured the next day.
So while sympathetic, Duffey said Jackson was ultimately responsible for his own actions, and the bank job was not his only robbery. “I have an acute view of who you are and you are dangerous.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nekia Hackworth said Jackson was an aggressor at the bank.
“He said, ‘Open that bank door or I am gonna start killing people,’” Hackworth said. “When he went, he went hard.”
For their roles in the bank robbery, Rogers was sentenced to 13 years and 10 months and Zanders got nine years and eight months.
Jackson sat quietly through most of Wednesday’s hearing. His grandmother, an uncle and two aunts sat quietly in the courtroom. His mother, who now lives in Germany, sent in a video statement.
They all portrayed a different person than the one on trial.
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