Photos by Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

Reginald Killingsworth was convinced by his mother Susie Killingsworth (left), and Gwen Neal (right), the mother of his child, to enter plea negotiations.

Reginald Wayne Killingsworth (right), who was convicted this week of capital murder in the shooting death of a Roanoke shopkeeper, pleads guilty before the jury was to begin debating his sentence.

Reginald Wayne Killingsworth claimed to a jury that he never intended to kill Zaid Almajali, that he shot the Melrose Avenue shopkeeper by accident after being insulted and threatened.

But Friday afternoon, just hours before the jury was expected to decide whether he deserved the death penalty for shooting the well-liked owner of Z-Mart, Killingsworth offered a new response to the charge of capital murder: "Guilty."

In a startling development that brought the weeklong trial to a sudden close, Killingsworth changed all of his pleas to the botched-robbery and murder charges from not guilty to guilty, and he also pleaded guilty in an unrelated robbery case that had yet to be tried. He agreed to a sentence of two life terms plus 26 years. One of the life sentences is without parole.

"He said he wouldn't beg but in the end he did," said Roanoke Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell. "The commonwealth is willing to show him the mercy that he did not show Mr. Almajali."

A Roanoke jury had already found Killingsworth guilty of capital murder Wednesday evening in the slaying and attempted robbery on Nov. 9, 2006. With the death penalty a real possibility, Killingsworth at last agreed to let his attorneys make a plea offer, which prosecutors accepted Friday.

"I think the prospect of a potential death penalty caused him to fold the tent," Caldwell said.

"The bottom line is with a capital murder verdict you can only go one of two ways, life without parole or the death penalty," said defense attorney Mark Claytor. "I didn't think we had many issues on appeal."

He said it took "cajoling and coaxing" to get prosecutors to agree. As for Killingsworth, who has in the past become angry with and even fired attorneys who tried to discuss plea negotiations with him, Claytor said that he "was convinced by his mom and his girlfriend and his brother that it was in his best interest."

"Any mother loves her child," said the defendant's mother, Susie Killingsworth, "and you still feel for the victims. This way they did bring him to justice and he has to pay and he knows that and he's sorry."

Killingsworth was the first defendant in a Roanoke capital murder case to be tried by a jury in 20 years and the first in 30 years to be found guilty of that charge by Roanoke jurors.

According to testimony, Killingsworth went into Z-Mart at the corner of Melrose Avenue and Forest Park Boulevard, brandished a Colt .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol and demanded money. He shot Almajali after the store owner tried to take the gun from him. He fled from the store after he couldn't get the cash register open and got into a car driven by his girlfriend at the time, Mendy Phelps.

Phelps led police on a high-speed chase through Northwest Roanoke before wrecking her car. A pair of police officers apprehended Killingsworth immediately after the crash.

Phelps has been sentenced to three years in prison for her role in the robbery attempt.

Michelle Radford, Almajali's first wife and mother of his oldest daughter, said she was satisfied with Killingsworth's punishment. "We're not as humans under God supposed to put anyone to death," she said. "Whatever his punishment is, that's what he has to live with, as long as I know he'll never be out to do this to anybody else."

Radford said she was grateful for the apologies Killingsworth's family offered to her and her daughter in court Thursday -- but it was harder to accept apologetic words from Killingsworth himself after he told the jury a version of events that blamed Almajali for the shooting. "He basically put Zaid on trial and made himself the victim," she said.

She said she wanted to thank Robert Anthony Bryant, robbed at gunpoint by Killingsworth two days before Almajali's death, for testifying about his ordeal Thursday during the sentencing phase. Killingsworth's plea Friday also resolved Bryant's case.

Ending a capital murder case with a plea agreement after the jury has already found the defendant guilty has no recent precedent in Roanoke, but experts on Virginia law say it's neither unusual nor unreasonable.

"This is a perfect example of responsible negotiation on both sides," said Steven Benjamin, a Richmond attorney who serves as secretary for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

"The defendant can change their plea at any time," he said. Someone charged with capital murder has the right to take their case to a jury to see if their defense will prevail. But once the jury finds a defendant guilty, he said, the defendant is placing the choice of life or death in the jury's hands.

"Every juror on that panel has taken an oath that they would be able to impose the death penalty. The only question for them is whether you should die. That's a heck of a gamble," he said. It makes sense at that point for the defense to re-evaluate their stance, Benjamin said.

As for the prosecution's side, "experienced commonwealth's attorneys understand that a certain life sentence imposed on a guilty plea is far more reliable than a death sentence imposed on a not guilty plea."

That's because a death sentence guarantees years of state-funded appeals, whereas with a plea, the defendant has lost his appeal rights: "He has gotten life and he will never be heard from again."

Caldwell expressed similar sentiments after the plea hearing ended Friday.

"A death penalty makes the defendant a cause celebre," he said. "In my opinion, there is no general deterrence involved in the death penalty."

Though Killingsworth's initial plea of not guilty made it necessary to go through a long trial, the expense of the trial would pale compared to the expenses generated by years of death penalty appeals, the prosecutor said.

"While I have no illusions that he has any real remorse for what he did," Caldwell said, "he can spend the remainder of his days regretting that Officers Crotts and Drake got over there as fast as they did and that he didn't have a better getaway driver."