Man draws 6 years for robbing meth dealer

PALMER — Though he maintains he was not guilty despite what the jury found, an Anchorage man sent away for six years for robbing a meth dealer in 2010 in Meadow Lakes said he isn’t totally innocent, either.

“I am at fault for the company I’ve kept,” Roderick McLean, 32, said at his sentencing hearing Tuesday. “One’s company is a reflection of oneself.”

McLean was one of five people hit with criminal charges after the robbery on Seldon Road Aug. 25, 2010.

One of those, the victim of the robbery, Jeffery Kowal, received three years for meth possession and distribution. Of those charged with the robbery, Lakendral Mitchell received a seven-year term, Jason Premo got 10 years and Geoffrey Sorden was given a two-year sentence.

Prosecutor Melissa Wininger-Howard said the men knew to target Kowal because he was a felon on parole and thus unlikely to be armed. They knew he would have meth and cash.

But, she said, even if it was a robbery of a drug dealer, Kowal’s wife and 3-year-old son were in the home at the time and the men showed up armed.

“It could have easily gone from robbery and assault to robbery and homicide,” she said.

A jury felt a need to convict McLean.

“The community condemned the act of robbery itself even if it was robbery for methamphetamines,” Wininger-Howard said.

McLean’s attorney, Josh Fannon, said that McLean was “the most intelligent, the most together client I have worked with.”

At one point in his life McLean had a scholarship to the U.S. Naval Academy he probably shouldn’t have turned down.

“Robberies and burglaries are the most dangerous cases in my view because if someone did that in my house I would shoot them,” Fannon said.

But this particular robbery involved a defendant who had never spent more than two days in jail prior to the act and one for whom a short sentence would be more than enough deterrence from future criminal actions.

McLean asked Superior Court Judge Gregory Heath to give him a sentence that would make it possible to spend more time with his young children. He said he wanted to raise them to not repeat his mistakes “so that their chances of one day being where I am currently standing are little to none.”

Heath sided with Wininger-Howard over Fannon, imposing the six-year term she recommended rather than Fannon’s recommended five-year sentence.

“He took the stand, told the jury his side of the story and they simply did not believe him,” Heath said.

He said everyone involved in the robbery knew who Kowal was and “knew his character and what was going on.”

And, he said, robbery isn’t something society can countenance.

“We see lots of these ending up with homicides, with innocent people getting hurt,” Heath said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.